Second Time Around
by Frozzy
Summary: She forgot that this was Kakashi, the ultimate procrastinator and selective truth-teller of the year. He became something else. Someone else. He became someone that she didn't want to know, but also someone that she desperately did want to know. And that was horribly contradictory. This was horribly contradictory. What was this? KakaSaku
1. Prologue

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Prologue:**

"Alright, alright, let's make a toast," Ino bellowed. She flung her drink to the side and very nearly smacked Shikamaru in the face with it. Sakura watched bemusedly from the opposite side of the table as he redirected Ino's arm so she wouldn't accidentally give him a shower with the sugary sweet beverage.

"Ah, Ino, I'm not sure you should be the one to-"

"To Naruto," Ino cut him off, "may he be merciful and not rub his promotion in Sasuke's face."

Sasuke, who was sitting in between both Naruto and Sakura, gave Ino a sullen look and twirled the beer in his hand an extra time. Sakura had half the heart to reach out and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but feared that if she did so her hand would wither and crumble upon contact. Sasuke was not in a good mood and Sakura was really not risking a vital body part to make him feel better. She would rather eat it herself before she sacrificed it to him. Of course Naruto would be completely oblivious to his sulking friend. Being officially promoted to jounin had cut off all blood circulation to his brain. Or that was what Sakura interpretation of the situation, anyway. Naruto didn't have a lot of social tact on a purely genetic level, so whenever grand events happened in his life, he lost what little amount of tact he had. You really couldn't blame him for something that was rooted in his DNA.

"All of you just watch out, I'm gonna get the tough missions from now on," Naruto said and Sasuke shrunk further back in his seat.

Shikamaru coughed and got Naruto's attention. "You know, it's normal for new jounin to be given B-ranked missions until they have adjus-"

"Yep, I'm gonna snatch them all."

Shikamaru sighed and stood up from his seat. "I'll go get us a new round."

Ino perked up immediately. "Get me something fruity."

"Yeah…" he said unconvincingly and lazed off towards the bar before she could grab a good enough hold of him. Unfortunately his escape wasn't part of Ino's plan. She slid out of her seat and shadowed him all the way up the bar to supervise the order. Ino ultimately fared best when she could dictate what other people should do. Sakura had quite often spewed out that insult whenever she and Ino got into each other's hair. In return Ino would call her a closed off bitch and Sakura would resort to fists. It was in the name of fun, so no one got truly hurt.

"There's a good chance Tsunade-shishou will let you try out next year, Sasuke," Sakura spoke across Naruto to a brooding Sasuke. He wasn't twirling his beer in his hands anymore, but was pushing it back and forth on the table as if it was helping him release all the pent up frustration he felt.

"Yeah, Sasuke," Naruto butted in. "I bet you've scored yourself a spot next year with the last test result you got. What was it again?"

"97."

"Out of 100, right? Right?"

"150."

"Eh, well…?"

Naruto sent Sakura a helpless look. She shrugged. She didn't know what to say either. Anything she could have said would have come out wrong.

At seventeen Sasuke had stumbled through the village gates and had promptly fallen into a coma that had lasted four months. Nobody had felt the need to ask what had happened and nowadays nobody felt the need to openly discuss it either, which was rather amazing since Naruto had a habit of bringing up taboo subjects. Sakura chose to believe it was a sign that he had matured. Eventually one badly beaten up Sasuke had struggled his way out of his comatose state. The harsh circumstances at that time had forced Tsunade to label him chunin and not imprison him for treachery. Konoha had needed the workforce and Sasuke had been too big an upper hand to ignore. This meant that his renewed loyalty hadn't been questioned at the time of his return. Nowadays, with no imminent war hovering in the horizon, his loyalty was questioned seven days to Sunday. He hadn't been charged with treachery primarily because Naruto had objected to it, but also because he had paid off a lot of his debt during the war. He had saved a lot of Konoha citizens and had very near entered a second coma at one point. He had worked hard to reinstate himself. However, Tsunade still refused to let him try out for jounin until the day he passed his monthly psychological test with flying colors.

Needless to say, Sasuke's mind was an ugly place to be and it hadn't grown any prettier in his adult years.

Sakura herself had risen in ranks to jounin at the age of seventeen and a half. It was around that time her father had passed away as well. Now, roughly a year later, she worked at the hospital as a fulltime medic and spent most of her time making progress in that area. She couldn't remember the last time she had been outside the village gates on a mission. She should ask Tsunade for a day off.

Shikamaru and Ino returned to the table with new beverages for everyone. Almost immediately Ino caught Sakura's gaze and leaned forward across the table. Sakura recognized the move and leaned in to play her designated part in the gossip sharing.

"Guess who we saw just now," Ino smiled silkily and lowered her voice so just Sakura would hear. "Kakashi. With a woman."

Sakura sat up straighter. "A woman?"

It was a known fact that while Sakura regularly bumped into Kakashi at the hospital, he never stuck around to talk. He said his obnoxiously cheerful 'yo' and continued on towards the exit with his plotless pornography safely in hand. As Sakura had always suspected, Kakashi wasn't the type to get attached. He was somewhat eccentric when it came to that. But it still stung when a person you respected and admired stopped associating with you beyond the customary wave and hello. He had pretty much run off both from her and Naruto after they had ascending to jonin rank. Ironically, they saw less of the man now that they were his equals.

"Some big breasted redhead," Ino confirmed and took a sip of her drink.

"Where?"

"The corner over there."

And indeed Kakashi was sitting at a table not far away from the bar. His silver hair was impossible to miss even in the dim light of the bar. Doing a quick examination of the situation, Sakura supposed that, yes, Kakashi was with a woman. But Genma and a couple of other jounin that she vaguely remembered to have seen at the jounin headquarters were sitting by the table as well. So despite how the woman was crowding close to Kakashi and was touching his shoulder with her brightly painted nails, a fashion that Sakura had never fully understood, she was an add on to the all male group. Not an add on to Kakashi in particular.

"He's with Genma," Sakura pointed out, but Ino shook her head.

"He's with her."

"And why would he be?" Sakura humored her friend.

"Because Kakashi has sex too."

"Ino, don't be gross," Sakura said, but her traitorous eyes inched back towards the jounin table. Ino noticed and raised a plucked eyebrow as if to say 'oh yeah?'

The eyebrow was Ino's normal way of making Sakura feel like the dirt that farmers scraped off their boots by the end of a working day. But here, in the closed off atmosphere of the local bar where they were surrounded by the potent smell of whiskey and stale cigarette smoke, she made Sakura feel dirty in a way that had her ears and face burn. Everybody knew that teachers didn't eat, sleep, buy groceries, did laundry or had sex like all other humans. They were teachers.

"I don't see how Kakashi having sex is gross," Ino persisted.

"I do," Sakura said with an air of finality and swept her pink hair off her sweaty neck. The air inside the bar was so heavy and stifled it could melt wax. Sakura was suddenly all too aware of how the thin stockings underneath her dress were groping her legs like a second skin. She should have remembered how much she hated dressing up, but the situation had called for it. She had done it for Naruto. It was his night and she would look pretty for her best friend.

"Kakashi is a man and all men think with their dicks," Ino said very unsubtly, not at all wary of the boys they were rubbing shoulders with and if they should accidentally overhear her.

"You've had too many bad boyfriends," Sakura said.

"You've had none at all."

Sakura shrugged, idly running a finger in circles along the brim of her glass. She could still remember Ino's first serious boyfriend, some ANBU operator who had made the mistake of calling Sakura frigid the first time Ino had introduced them. His following excuse had been 'rumor precedes you'. He had ended up with pudding smeared across his face and ice cubes shoved down his pants. That night Ino had defended Sakura's honor and had kicked Jiro out of her place. Good riddance.

"I'm tied up with work at the hospital," Sakura reminded Ino. "You know I have to pay rent for two places."

"Your mom needs to get over her depression," Ino said and grabbed a napkin from the table to wipe her hands with. "She's pulling you down with her."

"The last time I brought over her medication the dose had doubled," Sakura confessed, staring hard at the glass clasped tightly in her own hand. When Sakura had lost her father, she had lost her mother too, and Ino might have sounded inconsiderate, but she was speaking the truth. Sakura didn't want to end up with a woman she couldn't call mother, but she was running out of options fast. Her mother was already a walking drugstore and Sakura, the daughter, had become the drug provider.

"We need something stronger," Ino said promptly and turned to the boys.

Two hours later, the five of them were draped all over each other as they slurred out perverted words to make each other laugh. At the moment Naruto's 'snout' had gotten the best of all laughs, but Ino's 'flower sniffer' was not far behind.

"I'm going to the ba_-_athroom," Sakura hiccupped and stood up from the pile of drunk people. She swayed unsteadily on her feet. So she might have had a bit too much to drink, but she was allowed to celebrate.

"Don't take too long," Ino called after her.

Miraculously Sakura made her way across the room without knocking anything or anyone over. She still had her reflexes. When she turned the corner that she knew led to the bathrooms, she promptly bumped into Kakashi and his lady friend.

"Hello Sakura," Kakashi greeted pleasantly, his eye crinkling as he smiled. Sakura blinked and put a hand on a nearby wall. She looked at the redheaded woman pressed up against Kakashi's side. An impressive amount of cleavage was threatening to spill over the thin lace at the front of her dress. Spill over or split it in half. It was a pretty dress, but it was an ugly woman. Sakura felt sorry for the dress.

"I haven't met your girlfriend," Sakura said and nodded towards the woman. "You should introduce us."

Kakashi shook his head, letting the woman curl her manicured hand around his bicep.

"She's not your girlfriend?"

Kakashi's face remained painfully blank. "You should go back to Ino."

And the fact remained that you could only eversuspect things with Kakashi, because hell would run you over the day that he let you know what kind of socks he wore on Mondays. Sakura ignored the scowl on the woman's face and her possessive grip on Kakashi's arm. She knew what a woman looked like when she was pulling in her catch. It bothered Sakura that Kakashi would get pulled in so easily. That was not the Kakashi she knew.

"You never congratulated me when I became jounin," she said soberly and fisted the hand that was splayed out on the wall. She felt betrayed, she realized fuzzily, betrayed that Kakashi would bring this stranger home with him, but wouldn't stop in the hallways of the hospital to chat with her. Now admittedly Kakashi wasn't the chatting type, but it was still unfair. They had history. He was one of the people that she admired most in her life. Kakashi's eye observed her clenched hand on the wall, and his brow creased for a full second before he went back to his aloof self.

"I'm sure that I-" he began.

"No, you didn't. I was your first student to become jounin. You're a crappy teacher not to be proud of your students."

She didn't wait to see if his brow creased this time. A thick wave of nausea rolled up her throat, and she pushed away from the wall that she was leaning against.

"I gotta-" she broke off and waved her teacher and his female companion aside. Her pride took a hit, when she literally stumbled into the ladies room. She skidded across the slippery floor and threw herself at the sink just in time to empty her rebelling stomach. A minute later, she resurfaced and felt even worse. She fought to keep her knees locked. She would not slide to the floor like a pathetic lightweight. No. She groaned low in her throat and pressed her hot forehead against the mirror. She let out a startled sound when a piece of damp paper was pressed into her palm.

The redheaded woman was standing beside her. She was the one who had handed Sakura the piece of paper.

"Dry your mouth. He's waiting for you outside," the woman said and turned on her heel. Gathering her wits, Sakura quickly wiped her mouth clean and exited the bathroom on wobbly legs.

Kakashi was standing outside the bathroom with his hands in his pockets. He looked her over carefully when she emerged.

"You're going to regret this in the morning," he said and Sakura snorted.

"What part of it, sensei?" she asked.

He laughed. It was a low and masculine sound that made Sakura think of the redheaded woman. She felt a pang of guilt.

"Sorry."

He nodded and looked down at the floor. "Hm."

"Are you mad?"

"Yes."

"Will you walk me home?" she asked. Even if she had been sober, she would have had trouble handling a mad Kakashi. Now that she was drunk, it was even harder. Kakashi didn't get mad. He got indifferent. More so than what was typical for him. But thankfully her drunken mind did know that she couldn't let Kakashi stay mad at her. How her mind went from that conclusion to asking if he wanted to walk her home was beyond her. The idea had just pulled her in, smacked her across the face and told her that this was it. This was how you got Kakashi un-mad.

The man in question slid his hands out of his pockets and rubbed his chin through the mask.

"I'm not that mad, Sakura. I can walk you home," he finally said, offering her another eye crinkle.

As Kakashi lead her though the bar and they stepped out onto the deserted street, Sakura decided that she could apologize to Naruto tomorrow. Outside the bar, the air was cool and there was a gentle breeze that made her appreciate that she had worn a bra underneath the flimsy material of her dress. It was simple and it was old, but it kept her warm and she wouldn't be flashing Kakashi her-

"Lamppost."

Sakura blinked, licking her dry lips, "'cuse me?"

"Lamppost," he repeated.

"Wha-"

His gloved hand grabbed her wrist and she was pulled to his side right before she would have banged her forehead straight into a lamppost. Ah. Lamppost. The thing he had tried to warn her about. She flushed a healthy red and tried to cover it up by glaring at him. He was looking straight ahead, so he conveniently missed her glare.

"It was in m'blind spot," she defended herself. Her heels picked that moment to gnaw at her tired feet and she grimaced with discomfort.

"Of course it was," Kakashi said nonchalantly and slowed down his walk.

"Those heels can't be comfortable," he noted. Another sharp sting shot through her foot as she stepped on a rock and her ankle nearly twisted before she managed to right it. She let out a quiet hiss. She had to be sobering up if she could hear her feet complaining this loudly.

"I don't think I've seen you in a dress before," Kakashi mused as they passed the Yamanaka flower shop and the newly renovated teahouse next to it.

"You only see me at the hospital where m'in my uniform."

"Right, that skimpy little nurse outfit you all prance around in."

"It's a uniform. Naruto said it gave me chicken legs, the bastard," she mumbled shortly after, referring to her dress. "He's just afraid strange perverts will go home and jerk off to me. What were you doin' out with Genma, anyway?"

"He broke up with his girlfriend," Kakashi answered. His voice had changed for one reason or another, but Sakura didn't dwell on it.

"Oh, he was on the lookout for a rebound fu-"

Her foot slipped and she tripped, heading for the ground with her face first. Fortunately Kakashi's hand curled around her upper arm and pulled her back up before she inadvertently would have given herself a crooked nose and a blood spattered dress that would called for some expensive dry-cleaning.

As Kakashi let go of her arm, she caught him muttering an amused: "Where does she pick up these things?"

"Huh?" she asked and blinked owlishly. She wondered why her voice was so loud when his wasn't.

"You can put it like that," he answered her previous question and his eye creased in the corner.

"I bet this isn't how you had pictured your night to turn out… walking home your drunk student."

"Fellow jounin, you mean," he corrected as they turned a corner and Sakura nearly skidded halfway across the street until Kakashi caught hold of her again and got her back on the sidewalk next to him. Naruto and Sasuke both were lazy drunks, so naturally that had rubbed off on Sakura. The moment that she would step through her creaking bedroom door, she would flop down on her bed, grunting and snoring unattractively into her pillow. Then, around midday, she would wake up with fuzzy teeth, smudged make up and a wrinkled dress. Unless she had to go to work, of course, but she enough sense of responsibility not to drink if she had to go to work the day after. Less could be said for Naruto and Sasuke, but technically they didn't know when they would be working. Field work was irregular and often caught you by surprise. Work at the hospital was regular and you could plan an everyday schedule after it. It was routine and it was easy to get lost in.

Some women woke up looking like a skin cleanser commercial and others just woke up looking ugly. Sakura was the latter.

"Why did you wait for me? At the bar?"

"I figured you would need an escort home," Kakashi answered.

"After I had thrown up in front of you."

She thought of that one time some years ago when she had gotten her period during a weeklong mission. She had had to face Kakashi and explain just why they needed to make an urgent stop in the next village.

And of course Kakashi would think of that too.

"It can't be much worse than the mission to Water Country."

She aimed to punch his shoulder, but missed it completely and heard him chuckle.

"Shut up," she said. She could feel her face burn. "I wasn't the one who came to the hospital last week because I had cut off half of my hand with a kitchen knife. D'you even cook?"

Kakashi wisely chose to change the subject. "This is your street, isn't it?"

"Oh," Sakura exclaimed, taking the bait. "It is."

Her building with the blue doors was located a few feet ahead of them. The tiny flower-clustered yard in the front stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest of the buildings that were cramped together on the narrow side road. Kakashi followed her through the small yard and all the way up to the hideously blue door where they both stopped.

"Thanks for walking me home."

"Anytime," Kakashi smiled beneath his mask.

Nodding, Sakura put a hand on the doorknob and then paused.

"You really were gonna sleep with that woman?"

Kakashi sighed and scratched his neck, but he didn't seem all that surprised. He must have known that she wouldn't let it go that easily. Sakura didn't hold grudges, but she chased answers until she got them. She wanted this answer. Why did she want it when she already knew that it would ruin her picturesque view of the man? Did she want her picturesque view to be defiled?

"You're an adult, Sakura. You know the answer to that."

Ino's earlier blunt words came back to Sakura. She was overpowered with the need to know. She would later blame that need and her drunken mouth for what she said next.

"Have you ever thought about kissing me?"

His eye widened and Sakura had never seen him look so shocked. Then the look was replaced with something else. Something that had her breathe harder and set her skin aflame so unexpectedly that she reared back as if she had been slapped. She forgot that this was Kakashi, the ultimate procrastinator and selective truth-teller of the year. He became something else. Someone else. He became someone that she didn't want to know, but also someone that she desperately wanted to explore. And that was horribly contradictory. This was horribly contradictory. What was this?

"Go sleep it off, Sakura," Kakashi ordered. "We can catch up another time."

"Alright. G'night."

Then she was inside the building, leaning with her back up against the blue door and wondering what the hell that had been about.

* * *

Sakura was woken up by a steady pounding that rivaled the one in her head.

"Sakura, open up the door. Sakura! I'll knock in it if I have to!"

Sakura groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and shivered when her bare feet touched the cold floorboards. Snuffles had been kicked to the floor during the night and Sakura very nearly tripped over the stuffed toy as she made her way across her bedroom.

"About time," Ino exclaimed as Sakura unlocked her front door and let the blonde woman enter her apartment.

"Where did you run off to yesterday?" Ino asked. Sakura lingered by the open door, looking bleary-eyed and worn-out with hair shaped like a pink pineapple growing out of her head.

"Well, you look like shit," Ino summed it up quite nicely. She put a hand on her cocked hip while Sakura padded over to the couch and flopped down on the flower patterned cushions. The couch was second hand and it was incredibly ugly. But God it was soft. Ino really was the female equivalent to Naruto and one Naruto in Sakura's life was enough.

"So?" Ino pressed. "Hurry up and get your story together. Where did you run off to? Did you get picked up by someone?"

Vaguely, Sakura wondered why Ino never suffered from hangovers.

"Kakashi walked me home."

Ino crinkled her brow. "Wait, I thought-"

"I asked him if he wanted to kiss me," Sakura interrupted. There was a long pause and Sakura wished that she had picked up her stuffed whale when she had passed him on the way to the front door. She could use a good cuddle.

"Who?"

"Kakashi."

"You… you asked…," the rest of the sentence died when Ino bent over laughing. Sakura sat dopily on her couch and let Ino laugh, because while Ino would never let Sakura live this down, the disappointment Sakura felt low in her stomach was much more foreboding.

* * *

**Edited March 4, 2013 **


	2. Chapter One

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter One**

"Mom, I'm putting down your medicine here."

Her mother remained unresponsive where she sat by the window in her bathrobe with a cup of untouched morning coffee at hand. If it hadn't been for the unfocused and faraway look in her eyes, the sight of her mother wouldn't have made Sakura feel so terribly lost. A patient, an ANBU captain, had died on her last night from a vicious poison attack. Sakura did not need this to top off the bad experience. Perhaps this was why she wasn't behaving as pedagogically as she usually made sure to do.

"I'm putting it here," Sakura repeated and placed the small container of pills on top of the kitchen counter where it seemed the cleanest. "You take one now and one in the afternoon."

"I've done this many times, Sakura," her mother answered. "I hear you."

"I don't think you really do, mom," Sakura said and walked over to the couch where empty boxes of cheap take-out food littered the small coffee table. This was the same table that her father had used to sit by when he and Sakura had played cards late into the evening, or when she as a small girl had watched him clean his weapons and had thought that being a ninja was cool. She didn't understand why her mother insisted on still living here. The house was too big and it had too many memories.

"I'm not done with those," her mother spoke up, referring to the boxes that Sakura had begun picking up from the table.

Sakura sent her mother a blank look. "You're not eating this."

Her mother turned her head away from the window and looked at Sakura for the first time since her daughter had entered the house. The unexpectedness resulted in Sakura's hand slipping and she almost dropped a box of dried-out rice.

"You come around here too often," her mother said softly.

Sakura didn't know what to say to that. This was very often the case when she visited her mother. Their conversation would slip into dangerous zones. Since she didn't know what to say, Sakura took her time shoving the take-out boxes into the trash bin. She then began doing a thorough examination of every expiration date on every product stored in her mother's fridge.

"Why did Naruto stop coming with you?" her mother asked. Sakura stilled.

"We all work, mom," she explained as vaguely as possible and threw out an expired, unopened cheese. Her mother's brow furrowed, but Sakura wasn't worried if she suspected that her daughter had just lied to her. When it came down to it, Sakura knew that her mother would prefer 'we all work' to 'I asked him to stop'. The latter held too much truth in it. Truth wasn't good for her mother's spirit these days. It wasn't very good for Sakura's spirit either, but that was a different can of worms.

"That's a shame," her mother said and took a hesitant sip of her now cold coffee.

"Do you want me to make a new pot of coffee before I leave?"

Sakura closed the fridge, done with her check up, and turned around to see her mother look up from her lap.

"I'm not helpless, Sakura."

To her credit Sakura only paused for a brief second. "I didn't say you were, mom."

Her mother smiled and Sakura couldn't find more to do. She gently reminded her mother of the pills on the kitchen counter and left the house with an eerie sense of stillness circulating her body.

* * *

It was tradition that twice a week Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto ate lunch together since they no longer spent the majority of their day in each other's company. Thank God. Today was Sakura's treat so she naturally got to pick the place, which was also the reason to why she was first on the scene when Sasuke arrived.

"Sakura."

"Hello Sasuke," she greeted the soft-spoken Uchiha and watched him sit down in the seat opposite of hers. He never sat next to her, a forced habit with roots stretching all the way back to when they were children and before his impromptu departure to Sound. She could have played the blame game, but she wasn't so sure she would have wanted to sit next to herself either.

He took one look at her and asked rather insensitively: "What's wrong with you?"

"I lost a patient."

That and the glorified whore living in the apartment beneath Sakura had been yelling down the walls of the building for the past four nights. Sakura would have to talk to her landlord about it. Couldn't a person be evicted for keeping the other residents up with ceaseless moaning and banging against walls? Banging up against walls. Sakura wasn't sure if she could deal with it much longer.

"The Hokage wants you to stop by her office later," Sasuke informed her. He was studying the menu, no doubt wanting to do it in peace before Naruto arrived and would want to give his advice on what to pick.

"Did she say what it was about?"

"No-"

"Hey, hey, don't you two start without me!"

Both Sasuke and Sakura looked up at the arrival of their loudmouthed blond friend. He flopped down in the seat next to Sasuke and snatched the menu from his slack hands. This was one of the times where Sasuke let him.

"Do you see any food?" Sasuke replied in what Sakura knew to be his sarcastic voice.

"Did you ask her out yet?" Naruto asked smugly and Sakura watched Sasuke's face turn as pink as her hair.

"Ask who out?" she cut in and not surprisingly it was Naruto who answered. He grinned and held up the laminated menu, unfolding it so it shielded the two of them from Sasuke's half of the table.

"This girl Sasuke is crushing on," he whispered secretively behind the paper shelter. Then the menu was whipped out of Naruto's hand and Sasuke whacked him over the head with. In fact, he whacked him with it so hard that Naruto's face rushed down to kiss the table which created a smacking sound that made the people nearby turn their heads.

"Bastard, save that for the training grounds," Naruto said and rubbed his sore nose.

"I'm notcrushing on any girl."

Ten minutes later Naruto had predictably settled for his miso ramen. Sakura and Sasuke both had caved in and ordered the same.

"When you wake up one day and realize you've transformed into a big noodle, please remember not to eat yourself," Sakura said. "Healing food tissue is not my forte."

The Rasengan wielder gave Sakura a confused look that would have been adorable if it hadn't been for the food dripping down the left side of his chin.

"Huh?"

"Idiot," Sasuke said from his seat, chewing delicately on a bite that was half the size of those that Naruto shoveled into his mouth. Naruto scowled at his friend and shoveled another fist sized bite into his mouth.

"You won't find yourself a girlfriend if you eat like that," Sakura said instead, wiping her mouth with a napkin as though that would remove the mess Naruto was successfully making of his own face.

"But Sakura-chan, if you want to talk about-"

"If you finish that you will leave with a chopstick rammed through your eye," Sasuke warned.

"Jeez, you're in a bad mood today."

It was settled. Sakura was going to corner Naruto later and get all the juicy details, because something sensational was going on and she was excluded from it. It was important that she was always informed of sensational news, because if she wasn't there to supervise, things got ugly really fast.

"Did any of you hear which village that'll host the chunin exams this year?" she said before Sasuke really did ram something through Naruto's eye.

"We have it this year."

Sakura pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Konohamaru became chunin last year, right?"

"Yep," Naruto beamed proudly, obviously thinking he had had something to do with that fact.

"Do we know anyone this time?"

"Erm… no?"

"They're all five years younger than us and none of us have any students," Sasuke pointed out when Naruto failed to say more.

"That doesn't mean we don't know anyone," Sakura argued, tempted to wave her finger at the man. She knew better than to actually do it.

"If Kakashi-sensei was teaching a new team we could have cheered for them," Naruto slurped noisily around the food in his mouth. That actually made good sense. Sasuke's coaly stare met Sakura's brilliant green one as they exchanged a look across the table.

"He's not," Sasuke said, recovering first. Naruto had spoken sense. You had to recover from that.

"But if he-"

"He isn't," Sakura agreed with Sasuke.

"It's not fair when you gang up on me like this."

Sasuke snorted. Sakura smiled into her food, but the smile was as half-assed as they came.

Half an hour later she had deserted her boys and was heading towards the Hokage Tower and Tsunade's heavily trafficked office. She doubted that bawling out her eyes would affect her pokerfaced teacher, but she was not above giving it a try if it turned out that Tsunade wanted to discuss the details of the ANBU captain's death a third time.

* * *

"It would seem that your reputation as a medic precedes you."

Tsunade put down the flagged file she had been studying and continued. "Throughout these last months I've received a lot of requests where team captains have specifically asked for you as their medic on high-risk missions. That's because you're damn good, Sakura."

Sakura straightened her back where she was standing in front of Tsunade's desk, experiencing a not-so-small amount of pride upon hearing that fact coming from Tsunade herself. Sakura knew she was good. It was difficult not to know whether you were a failure or success in the competitive world that they lived in. But Tsunade rarely ever said it so straightforwardly.

"So, in light of these requests, I have decided to give you a choice. An opportunity, if you will," Tsunade said and leaned forward in her chair.

"You can continue on as you do now, working at the hospital fulltime. Or I can transfer you to the pharmacy floor of the hospital, which essentially means that you'll have fewer working hours, so the possibility of coming to work in the field as a medic will be larger than what it is now."

She would feel sunlight on her face and not fog up windows with her breath at the same time?

"So, Sakura, what will it be?"

"The second option, Hokage-sama," Sakura answered, not surprised by how easily the answer came to her. She did love her job at the hospital and she did love the trust that so many people put in her, but a lengthened leash was just as loveable, if not more.

"Then I guess it's a good thing that the transfer takes place this Monday."

"You already arranged the transfer?" Sakura asked dumbly.

"Are you saying that the two years I spent on training you were a waste?"

Sakura laughed awkwardly, "Ah, no, of course not. You would know what I would choose."

"Good. Then we agree," Tsunade concluded and lowered her eyes to her desk and the towering paper pile-ups on each side of her. She reached into one of her drawers and pulled out a thick scroll.

"Before you leave, will you do me a favor and deliver this to Kakashi? The idiot left earlier without it and I can't be bothered to track him down myself," Tsunade said and held out a sealed scroll for Sakura to take.

For just a split second Sakura hesitated, but that was all it took for Tsunade's eyes to narrow.

The older woman raised a brow and rested her chin on top of her interlaced fingers. "Is there a problem?"

"I'll find him," Sakura promised and took a quick hold of the scroll that was being offered to her. Her hand was clammy when she tucked the scroll into her belt pouch and her posture was stiff, but Tsunade didn't comment on any of it. She leveled her with an unreadable look and dismissed her thereafter.

The truth was that up until now Sakura had strategically placed herself behind various food stalls and bushes whenever the Copy Ninja had been near, so when she managed to locate Kakashi outside the jonin headquarters thirty minutes after having left Tsunade's office, she felt pathetic. And idiotic. He was descending one of the many stone stairways that lead away from the headquarters and into town, when she called out for him across the open space. He stopped to look over his shoulder at her approaching form. When she closed in on him, he stepped to the side and leant up against the handrail so there would be room for both of them on the narrow stone steps.

"You forgot this scroll in the Hokage's office," Sakura said when she came to a halt in front him.

"Ah, right," Kakashi said, not sounding sorry at all. Sakura ignored his blatant indifference and fished forward the mission scroll from her pouch, fully intent on finishing her task and scurry off. It was just unfortunate that Kakashi didn't take the scroll from her hand. Instead, he moved out of his comfortable slouch and continued down the steps with his hands buried in his pockets as it was common for him.

"Where are you going?" she yelled after him with the scroll still in her hand.

"Groceries."

Sakura cursed under her breath and took off after the retreating ninja, jogging down the steps until she caught up with him. They reached the last step together and Kakashi took a turn down a road that led to the swarmed marketplace in the center of the village.

"You… is this a joke?" Sakura asked.

He looked at her funnily. "Well. I do need to eat."

"So, I'll have to wait for you to buy a bag of apples before you're gonna take over the scroll that is in fact assigned to you?" she asked, sidestepping a bench that had seen it fit to squeeze its way in between her and the Copy Ninja. Kakashi hummed a sound that was neither a yes, nor a real no. He did a lot of that. It was his default setting.

"You never used to doubt my motives back in the day," he said. "But let's not forget you were also horribly naïve as a child."

Sakura's mouth dropped open. Forget the groceries. She could rip out chunks of his hair and feed him with that.

"I'll let you know," she emphasized, "that I graduated from the academy in the top five."

"Oh, I don't doubt that."

They had reached the more trafficked part of the village and the road they travelled by had begun to thicken with people and household animals having ventured away from the safety of their homes. A couple of civilians travelling on horses caught sight of Kakashi's jonin gear and guided the large animals to the opposite side of the road. Sakura remembered one of her lessons with Tsunade the previous year where the short-tempered woman had proclaimed that all villagers feared those who protected them. And those who didn't fear their protectors were plain stupid. Sakura had tried to explain that it was discouraging to watch the villagers fear you. After all, you had devoted your life to protect them. But Tsunade had advised her to grow a pair, and it was pure luck that Sakura had dodged the boulder that had accompanied the fond advice. It was around that time that Sakura had learned not to question whatever wisdom Tsunade saw it fit to pass on to her. Also, it very often turned out to be true.

"I'm being transferred to another floor at the hospital," Sakura told Kakashi on a sudden whim. She watched a nearby cluster of giggling academy students chase an orange cat with a burnt tail up on a roof. "Tsunade-shishou wants me back on missions."

"That's convenient," Kakashi noted, slipping a hand out of his pocket to tap his chin.

"What do you mean?"

"Naruto is a jonin now."

"So you think that it's her intention to pair us up for missions?"

"It's an option."

An option they both knew Tsunade would be a fool to ignore. And whereas the female Hokage might be ill-tempered and brash like her pink-haired apprentice, she was no fool. Tsunade was Kakashi's female counterpart when you talked nasty ulterior motives and old man Jiraiya was Kakashi's counterpart when you talked supreme perverseness. It almost made you fear what unflattering trait Kakashi could have picked up from the third Legendary Sannin. Better not dwell on that. Instead, Sakura ought to dwell on the fact that this was the longest sober conversation that she had had with Kakashi in over two years.

Sakura sighed. "Sasuke is going to raid every liquor store in town when he finds out that he can't join-"

"Kakashi-san?"

The two ninjas stopped to look over their shoulders and were very nearly tramped down by a herd of people. One woman separated from the herd and approached them. The woman was a petite brunette and that was the only thing that stopped her from being a complete replica of the slim redhead from the disastrous night at the bar weeks ago. Sakura could feel a vein somewhere near her forehead pop and burst open.

"I thought you were out of town?" the woman asked Kakashi with a delicate downturn of her lips.

"Ah, yes, you see," he started, "I returned to the village this morning and was held up at the hospital."

Liar, Sakura thought.

The woman's dark eyes flickered towards Sakura. "And who is this?"

"This is-"

"I'm his daughter."

The brunette's face fell and then contorted until it looked like she had been force-fed a basket of lemons. "You have a daughter?"

Sakura smiled sweetly at the appalled woman. Whatever reply Kakashi could have come up with to save his ass was lost on them all, as the woman turned on her heel and galloped away. Kakashi wasn't the only one who could make up lies. But Sakura didn't feel nearly as vindicated as she had hoped.

"Was that really necessary?" Kakashi asked.

"Kakashi-san," Sakura mimicked the woman's purr. "Whatever happened to common, regular taste?"

"It's sex, Sakura," he told her bluntly, watching her blanch and lose grip of her act. "You don't need to have a taste to sleep with someone."

"So you would sleep with the first bucktoothed woman that you came across?"

They passed an elderly couple who overheard Sakura speak and she earned herself a dirty look from the overweight woman of the two.

"I think that the Yamanaka woman have finally rubbed off on you," Kakashi said once the couple was safely out of hearing range.

"Sweep the dirt off your own doormat before you pick at mine," Sakura advised him, the blush on her face dying down as her irritation level rose. There was a vast difference between Kakashi the authority and Kakashi the person. This was Kakashi in his non-childproofed version and Sakura hated to admit that this version was particularly interesting compared to the other. Apparently, a shift seemed to have had happened in their relationship, probably as a consequence of her drunken mouth, but it was too soon to say if the change would stay or go. It was too soon to say if she wanted to change to stay or go.

"Here we are."

Kakashi stopped so suddenly that Sakura nearly broke her nose by ramming her face into his shoulder. A shoulder that smelled extremely nice.

"What?"

The man inclined his head and Sakura followed his line of sight.

"No," she said.

"No?"

"No. I'm not buying groceries with you."

Sakura was fed up. She would not be dragged around by a man who found her anger entertaining and only sought to add fuel to the fire. Ino had said Kakashi wasn't a preteen, and perhaps she had had a point there, but right this minute Sakura was sorely tempted to claim otherwise.

"Do you get off on this?"

The look he gave her spoke volumes.

"The scroll," he said, hiding a smile underneath his mask.

"Of course. The scroll," Sakura repeated. She practically shoved the item into his outstretched hand. Later she was going to regret not having punched the living daylights out of the man, but right now she had enough trouble blocking out the lewd voice whispering for her to grope his hand.

* * *

Sakura sat perched on the toilet lid, idly picking at her fingernails and listening to how the water from the shower splashed against the panels of the cubic space where Naruto was showering. It was no rare occurrence that Sakura would drop by, and it just so happened that this particular evening Naruto had been soaping up his hair when Sakura had invaded his home.

"So, Megumi, is it?"

"Yep," Naruto agreed from under the flow of water.

"I ran into Kakashi-sensei today," Sakura said. She had no real interest in Sasuke's conquests, however nice they might be. Chances were slim that anybody of importance (read: Naruto and Sakura) would ever be introduced to this Megumi. Sasuke didn't maintain romantic relationships, which actually didn't bode very well for the man who was constantly being pressured by the village to produce heirs and secure the Uchiha bloodline.

"He thinks Tsunade-shishou might be planning to pair us up for missions again."

The water was turned off and Naruto's hand crept out of the shower stall to grab a towel.

"Kakashi-sensei said that?" he asked, the towel muffling his voice.

"He did."

"But Sasuke can't team up with us," Naruto said as he stepped out of the shower stall and padded over to the mirror. For Sakura's sake, he had wrapped a towel around his waist. Sakura saw a lot of naked men in her profession, but Naruto was too much like a brother for him to walk around buck-naked in her presence. She hoped that he felt the same about her. Except for one scar that ran diagonally across his right shoulder blade and another fainter one that was stretched across his bicep, Naruto's skin was mostly unmarred. It was a testament to the wicked healing rate of Kyuubi and Sakura's kick-ass medic skills.

"Well, he's in a difficult situation and so is Tsunade-shishou, I guess."

"But Kakashi-sensei was the one who brought it up."

Sakura would have loved to disagree, but Naruto had a valid point there.

"He could be wrong," she tried unconvincingly. She got up from her seat and prepared to exit the bathroom so Naruto could get dressed.

Ten minutes later, Sakura and a fully dressed Naruto had regrouped to the living room. They had just barely sat down on Naruto's old and tattered couch, when the hideously yellow curtains of the living room were pushed aside and Sasuke entered the apartment through the open window.

"I have a door," Naruto said and pointed in the direction of it. "With a doorbell attached to it."

"Your point is?" Sasuke replied uninterestedly.

"I know you like shiny stuff. My doorbell is particularly shiny."

Sasuke gave his friend an unamused look and steered straight for the kitchen.

"I'm low on food," Naruto called after him.

"Try the cupboards to the left," Sakura suggested. This was where Naruto tended to store everything eatable that wasn't included on his limited list of proper food for a self-proclaimed future Hokage. In his simplified world, a Hokage didn't eat nutrients like every other carbon-based organism did. Surely the Hokage could live by eating noodles for supper every day, because the Hokage was just that awesome. Sakura really ought to burst Naruto's bubble before it grew all thick and fuzzy.

She lowered her voice and sent Naruto a sharp look. "You can't tell Sasuke. You shut up about this until we know for sure."

"I can keep my mouth shut."

"Not around Sasuke, you can't," Sakura said. "And you always leave me to deal with the mess afterwards, so just shut it, alright?"

Naruto didn't get a chance to answer. Sasuke entered the room with an unpeeled orange in one hand and a glass of water in the other. The sight would have been hilarious to people who weren't accustomed to laying eyes on the supposed Uchiha psycho killer when he wasn't in combat mode. No one believed you when you tried to explain that Uchiha Sasuke had a homely side, too.

"Is that an orange?" Sakura asked, her eyes zeroing in on the fruit.

"Do I have oranges?" Naruto asked excitedly.

"No, it's a mutant lemon," Sasuke said and sat down in the unoccupied armchair, fully focused on the task of peeling the fruit and reach the juicy flesh inside.

"What?" Naruto asked.

"Yes, it's an orange," Sakura translated, shooting Naruto an exasperated look. She had no idea how Naruto and Sasuke managed to communicate when she wasn't around, so she figured it was a good thing that she was in it for the long ride. It was just really unfortunate that she didn't know precisely what side road that the long ride was going to make her walk.

* * *

**Edited March 4, 2013**


	3. Chapter Two

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Two**

Sakura had had a blade eating away at her too many times for the pain of it to be unendurable. It wasn't a walk in the park, but you got used to wounds the same way that you got used to starvation or sleep deprivation. On the battlefield Sakura had made it a personal habit to always heal her wounds when the blood loss began to interfere with her fighting skills. She knew how important it was to take the time to heal yourself. But what was happening now was a different kind of pain than the one on the battle field. This was the pain in the ass.

"It's listed as an A-class retrieval mission," Tsunade said from where she was standing by one of the many windows in her office. "But I'll spare you the false pretenses and tell you that halfway throughout it, you will have killed a minimum of two people each."

Right from entering the office Sakura had paid attention to all that had rolled off the Hokage's tongue. It was an enforced habit. But it was getting increasingly difficult not to catch a glimpse of the two men that flanked her sides.

"Your client, village leader Imagawa Kaito, was robbed of a set of antique ruby earrings and matching necklace when bandits raided his village about one week ago. Several witnesses have identified one of those bandits as Fukuda Hisashi."

Sakura's stomach plummeted to her feet. Next to her, Naruto stilled considerably. Kakashi did nothing.

"It must come as no news to you that he is the infamous hired muscle of Sakamoto Tora, and that is precisely why this will not stay a retrieval mission for very long," Tsunade sighed and sat down in her chair.

"Sakura," she addressed her student gravelly. "You are aware of Sakamoto's reputation?"

Sakura cleared her throat. She wasn't ready to be singled out while her stomach was still rummaging around somewhere down by her feet.

"She is a former ninja of Grass country with no last known location. Although, for the past year she has regularly been spotted crossing the border between Grass and Waterfall. There is reason to believe that she's running an illegal cross-border market. She is also a reputed practitioner of higher level poisons-"

"-known for her untraceable and scentless gasses that can have you drop dead five seconds after inhalation. It's not for lack of trying that there are no antidotes to over half of her inventions," Tsunade finished for her. Sakamoto's poisonous gasses had become nothing short of a legend among the Konoha medics. Sakura herself was also impressed by the woman's skill level, but she couldn't think like that any longer. Not now that Sakamoto was the target. You couldn't fear your target. It was all about putting in the right mindset. Sakura would work on that and have it settled before their three-man group set off for Grass country and their client.

"So, the jewelry retrieval mission was requested by Grass and has been commissioned by both Rain and Waterfall should you pass onto their territory. This means there should be no trouble when you pass any borders given that you do so legally and as part of your assigned mission. Instructions on how to get to the village are listed in the scroll and if you need any further information then that will be in the scroll as well," Tsunade said, referring to the mission scroll that she had handed over to Kakashi upon their arrival one hour earlier.

"Tsunade-sama, may I ask a question?"

"Go ahead, Sakura," she permitted. "And don't be so formal."

"Yes, well, why did they ask for our aid?"

Tsunade sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"They didn't want to deal with Sakamoto without a suitable medic at hand, and it turns out that they have no Grass medics suited for the task. And we breed good medics."

Breed, Sakura thought derisively.

Tsunade cleared her throat and stood up, her palms coming down flat on the desk in front of her.

"The payment is that of a regular A-class mission, but it might vary depending on how much of a threat Sakamoto turns out to be. Your client has agreed to those terms," she assured them, the frown on her forehead growing more emphasized with every word.

Sakura knew it was bothering her that she was sending them out on an A-class mission that could very well turn out to have the difficulty level (and death rate) of an S-class, hence why the payment hadn't been settled already as it was common procedure.

"Now, if I don't hear anything else, I expect you to be off tomorrow morning. And no dawdling," Tsunade said with pointed look at Kakashi.

"Of course not, Hokage-sama."

Despite his many other character flaws, Sakura had never known Kakashi to be a slouch when it came to his job. He could be annoyingly lazy right until he had a kunai imbedded in his neck, but that might just be a side effect of his masochistic nature and not a reflection of his work ethic. You didn't go into this profession and expected not to be irreparably messed up once you passed the ten years mark. It should be part of the job description. Or read aloud to all new academy students with accompanying pictures and illustrations. That would scare off those who were unsuited for the profession, though perhaps that was a bit hypocritical of Sakura to say.

"Off you go then," Tsunade dismissed the three of them. "I don't need any more delays today. I've got enough paperwork to bring me into the next year already."

"One more question?" Sakura asked.

"What is it, Sakura?"

"I thought Sakamoto already had been imprisoned for committing felony?"

"That was one of her cronies."

"Excuse me?"

"She put one of her cronies in her place," Tsunade repeated patiently. "When he attempted to escape his cell and his penalty, he was killed by the guards. And since his transformation jutsu no longer had chakra to fuel it, the charade ended like that."

"That's a low level technique. Why did no one recognize it?"

"Because all leadership within Grass is incompetent. They're a bunch of pansy asses."

Experience told Sakura that now was the time to put that subject to rest. Sakamoto had obviously gathered followers that were out of the norm, meaning that they weren't salivating oafs. Grass might be incompetent, but Sakamoto surely wasn't.

"What's our plan then?" Naruto asked when the three of them had exited the Hokage's office.

"One of the bandits was captured during the raid. I suppose our best shot would be to interrogate him and see if he can give us anything on Sakamoto's whereabouts and the stolen item," Kakashi answered.

"And if he can't?" Sakura asked skeptically and stepped up next to the two men. Kakashi threw the pink-haired woman a sideways glance and it was a tough-ass struggle not to look away from that charcoal eye.

"We depart six o'clock tomorrow morning," he instructed, overruling Sakura with captain mode.

"We'll meet up at training ground four and go through the essentials before heading out. How does that sound?"

* * *

"Fucking peachy."

"Sasuke…"

"Think of it like this," Naruto tried for the fifth time. "You get to do tons of other missions while we're stuck with this one."

"You're missing the whole point, dumbass."

More like pointedly overlooking it, Sakura thought tiredly. She was wary of the discussion that had gone on for approximately half an hour now. It was running as thick as ever. If Tsunade could predict ten ninjas attacking the local bathhouse on the night of the next full moon, then shouldn't she have predicted how this mission of hers would shove the stick in Sasuke's ass up so far that he would choke on it and die a pitiful death? Sakura smiled wryly to herself. You've made your bed, Sasuke. Now you have to sniff your way to your manly nuts and lie in it.

After having left the Hokage tower earlier that afternoon, Sakura and Naruto had agreed on a quick sparring session to get into the mood for the upcoming day. Conveniently, Sasuke had chosen to drop by, which led them to where they were now; heading back to the village with a mood as dark and thundery as the chilly evening sky above them.

Peachy, indeed.

"We didn't ask for the mission," Sakura said, breaking the stifling silence.

"You didn't refuse it either."

"There was no reason to refuse it. We fit the criteria adequately and should we succeed it'll look good on our records."

Naruto was sending Sakura his urgent 'back off now' look, but Sakura's tolerance quota had been just about reached after a day of work overload. She didn't have it in her to mother Sasuke's neurotic tendencies when he was like a kid insisting on touching the hotplates and she had told him no twenty times already.

"Adequately," Sasuke said.

Sakura balled her fists.

"Yes. Adequately."

"Adequate isn't acceptable."

"Maybe not to the Uchiha heir," Sakura answered, feigning a stony smile. "But for the rest of us, we can settle for adequacy if it gets us by."

"That's because the rest of you lack potential to grow beyond adequate," Sasuke said. Sakura was just about to point out that Sasuke was in fact the chunin in the group when an uninvited female voice joined in on the conversation.

"If it ain't the trio having a spat," Ino greeted from where she seemingly dropped down from the sky. She was followed by Tenten and, of course, Shikamaru. That was one downside of having a social circle that consisted entirely of ninjas. You never knew when someone popped up behind you and made you drop a dish.

"Congratulation on the transfer," Shikamaru greeted Sakura and rolled his shoulders backwards to crack the stiff joints in his neck. The medic in Sakura roared to the surface, but she was off hospital duty for at least a couple of weeks, so she shoved it back under again. She needed the break.

"Thanks."

"Did you hear that Hinata was offered your old spot?"

"Really?" Sakura exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "I thought Ino would have been taken in consideration first?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "I don't know about that. Hinata declined though."

"Makes sense."

"Hm?"

"Well, I couldn't picture her in that position," Sakura said. "And I bet she can't either. She's skilled enough, but the position consumes most of your everyday. And she has clan duties to attend to."

"She did say something about her schedule, if I remember correctly," Tenten added helpfully. By now, the large group had reached the outer part of the village, though none of them had taken much notice of it.

"If I was part of a clan as stuck-up as hers, I would work my ass off to get away from it. Not the other way around," Shikamaru said with his brows lowered in a soft scowl.

"She doesn't think like that," Tenten told him. "They're raised not to think like that."

Sakura figured that Tenten would know best, given that she had spent years around Neji who always seemed to be a victim of clan business in the most unfair ways. The poor guy had his reasons for being obnoxiously arrogant and conceited, and those reasons had nothing to do with 'because it gets him laid' no matter how wholeheartedly Naruto believed that.

"By the way, where's Chouji these days?" Sakura asked. "I haven't seen him around here since I got transferred."

"Surveillance mission."

"Lee and Neji got called out to an ANBU subdivision two weeks ago," Tenten said.

"I thought we had no ANBU divisions working the field right now?"

"It's somewhere close to Hidden Rock," she said.

"Shouldn't that be confidential?" Shikamaru asked and Tenten blushed an obvious red.

"Neji is slacking off," Shikamaru mumbled unhappily, shoving his hands down his pockets.

Tenten was on the defense immediately. "He is not."

"Oh, really?"

The loud bickering of Naruto and Ino made Sakura tune out whatever Tenten said next in favor of listening in on the other part of the group.

It was nearing midnight that day when Sakura finally got home after having spent hours on assuring her mother that Hana, the blonde nurse from 4A, would be the one to deliver her prescription medicine until Sakura would return in a few weeks time. Sleep should have come easily to her that night and yet she ended up lying on her bed, staring up at the disgustingly huge spider that had conquered her ceiling for three days in a row.

* * *

"And so he arrives," Sakura said from where she sat cross-legged on top of a large rock at the outer skirts of training ground four. Sitting on the ground directly below the rock was Naruto and the sound of his snoring could be heard reverberating throughout the cleared space of the training ground.

"The nostalgia is overwhelming, isn't it?" Kakashi greeted them.

"Painfully so," Sakura humored the older man and jumped off the rock. She nearly fell to the ground when her thigh decided to go into painful cramps at the sudden action. The nearby movement roused Naruto from his slumber.

"Wha- huh? Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yo," Kakashi greeted the blond whereas he should have been oozing with guilt instead.

"What time is it?" Naruto yawned and got up from the ground sluggishly.

"You've been asleep for two hours," Sakura said, rubbing her thigh and trying to look nonchalant while doing it. It was easier said than done. "So that would make it nine in the morning."

"Old habits die hard," Kakashi tried to apologize, but it didn't come out that way at all.

"Let's just go over the plan, so we can take off?" Sakura suggested and stretched her leg a last time to get rid of the cramps.

"The village is located in a valley close to the border of Grass and Waterfall," Kakashi began. "Once we get there we'll talk with the village leader and see if they have gotten anything else out of the man they've kept imprisoned besides his name."

"What's the prisoner's name?" Naruto inquired.

"Sasaki Fumio," Kakashi answered. It was hard to imagine Kakashi sitting up late at night to go over mission facts until they were engraved into his memory, but the way in which he answered that question made Sakura conjure up that precise image. How many missions, how many deaths and survivals, were stored in his mind? All jokes aside, it was very likely that Kakashi did suffer from eccentricity, self-inflicted or otherwise.

"That name doesn't ring a bell," Sakura admitted. "Are we sure he's not lying?"

Kakashi needed little time to think that one over.

"There are no records of the name anywhere."

"He gave up the name willingly, didn't he?"

Kakashi nodded and confirmed what Sakura had been dreading. So, their one possible lead was lying to them. This wasn't going to be easy. She hadn't expected it to be easy, but it was just nice not to be met with difficulties this early on in a mission.

"So what are we waiting for?" Naruto asked. His optimism clashed horribly with the overall mood of the moment.

"We've got no trail if the guy won't cooperate. It's not gonna be that easy," Sakura tried to warn her blond friend, but it was like speaking to an owl in the sense that all you would get in return would be a lazy blink and a slow shake of a wing.

It took one hour of travelling for Naruto to become bored and for Sakura to punch him in the face for suggesting that Shino had stationed bugs in her bedroom that spied on her when she slept.

"You didn't have to punch that hard," he grumbled and touched the tender side of his face where her hit had landed.

"I only punch hard," she said and ignored him after that, choosing instead to focus on the sound of rustling leaves in the late spring air and the feel of soft soil beneath her sandals. She nearly tripped over a large branch lying randomly across the road when Kakashi's amused voice interrupted the serenity of her thoughts.

"When was the last time you were out?"

"Eight months ago. If you leave out the chunin exams last year," she added as a quick afterthought.

Gaara had hosted the exams that year and his regular contact with Naruto had made him request Sakura's presence in the medical camp when things had gotten severely out of hand and a contestant had been injured to the point where Sakura would have called it manslaughter if he hadn't been patched up and had survived the traumatizing ordeal. That was the most field action Sakura had gotten that year.

Kakashi's voice pulled her back from her thoughts. "…must have been difficult to stay in shape. Those hallways don't give much room for exercise."

She snorted at his lame joke. If it had even been one.

"You know that healing people isn't any easier than killing them, sensei," she said. "In fact, it requires more knowledge to sew together someone's brain than what it does to slice it into pieces."

She thought she heard him laugh, but she could have imagined it.

"You all should stop calling me that. Sensei. It makes me sound old."

"Old habits die hard," Sakura said. It was around that same time Naruto walked up next to them with an energetic bounce in his steps.

"So, this Fukuda guy, what's his deal?"

"He's one of Sakamoto's henchmen," Kakashi answered.

"He is in charge of all the dirty work," Sakura supplied. It was a testament to their long association with Naruto that both Kakashi and Sakura adjusted easily to the topic change.

"How do you know all of this?" Naruto asked with his eyes suspiciously fixed on Sakura.

"Sakamoto is often discussed around the hospital. Her poisons are-"

"I bet Tsunade-baachan lets you snoop around in the archives."

"She does not," Sakura exclaimed, offended that Naruto would even think that of her teacher. "And I'm surprised you even know of the village archives."

"What idiot doesn't know?"

"You, I had thought," Sakura jested, poking him in the ribs. He jumped away from her and nearly tripped over Kakashi's larger body, but the older man sidestepped the blond just in the nick of time.

"But who are we tracking down then?" Naruto asked confusedly. "Poison Lady or Henchman?"

"I guess it depends on what information we squeeze out of the prisoner?" Sakura said and expected Kakashi to either agree or disagree with her. When nothing came, she felt free to pessimistically add: "If we squeeze out anything at all."

Kakashi's one eye darted down to her face. "Hm? What was that?"

She cursed herself when she flinched.

"What was wha-" she began to say, but for once Naruto timed his interruption perfectly.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, how long will it take us to get there?"

Kakashi removed his attention from Sakura. Much to her relief.

"They're expecting us in two days, so we should probably have arrived by then."

"Probably?"

"If we don't run into trouble."

"Why would we run into trouble?" Naruto asked and Kakashi and Sakura both sent him an equally blank look.

Amazingly enough they didn't run into trouble that day. If you don't count the time where Naruto stepped on a squirrel and Sakura freaked out on him until they realized it was already dead. They managed to find a relatively cheap inn in a smaller village where there was room for them to stay overnight. And much to Sakura's poorly hidden joy, the final sleeping arrangements proved that sometimes it did pay off to be female in a profession dominated by crude, muscled men.

Yes, Sakura got the last unoccupied single room all to herself.

"But why don't you share with Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto protested, dangling his and Kakashi's room key in front of her face while he and Sakura walked up the stairs to the first floor.

"I'm not sharing with Kakashi," Sakura said, her ears quickly coming to resemble two ripe tomatoes, but the chances of Naruto noticing that were slim. The light in the hallway was bad enough for you to trip over your own feet and have the floor slap you. Just because the mission said high-class on the paper, it didn't mean that you got to sleep in a cocoon of embroidered silk blankets woven together with shimmery gold threads.

"Speaking of Kakashi-sensei, where is he anyway?"

"Said something about scouting the area," Naruto said. "He left while you were using the bathroom earlier."

"That's either a lie or his paranoia is running high already."

They came to a halt in front of a door with 23 painted sloppily on the wood.

"Well, this is my room."

"Mhm," Naruto agreed absentmindedly. "We meeting up later?"

"Wanna head down to the bar for a drink in an hour or so?" Sakura suggested and maneuvered the key into the keyhole with little trouble. "It's only a quarter past nine, isn't it?"

"I'll knock on your door," Naruto promised and gave her a saucy wink before he continued down the hallway to find his and Kakashi's shared room.

Perhaps you could argue that whenever Sakura spent quality time with her friends there was always liquor involved. But as long as there was no other easily accessible cure that would have you puke your guts out together with the blood on your hands, alcohol would be the number one way to go. The Hokage herself would recommend it, Sakura was sure.

"Being a ninja isn't cool," Sakura said to her younger self. The hopeful children that enrolled in the Academy were all young victims of self-destructive behavior. Becoming a full-fledged assassin really didn't do much to quell that behavior. You could view it from all the angles you wanted to, but from someone's point of view you would always be thought of as a murderer. Even the bad guys had families and loved ones. It wasn't a very joyous thought to carry around in the back of your mind, and it was precisely that thought that had to be flushed out with harsh liquor and cigarettes.

"It's not cool. It's a job," Sakura said, throwing her backpack into the air. She watched it land on the stained mattress of her overnight bed. It bounced a couple of times before it settled down in a comfortable spot.

* * *

**Edited March 4, 2013 **


	4. Chapter Three

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Three**

The sheet was wrapped loosely around her thin form and slipped down from one shoulder when she moved to sit up against the headboard. Giving the dark skinned man on the opposite side of the bed a brief look, she began gathering her sweat drenched curls from around her naked body and quietly fixed them into a braid.

"You may leave," she ordered.

The young man hesitated. Adoration was painfully visible on his boyish features.

"Did you hear me? You may leave," she repeated. She was trying to play nice. But then the boy let his eyes wander down her bared body and play time was over.

"Get the fuck out, bellboy. We're done."

He flinched at the harsh tone, but he was deliberately slow in getting up from his spot on the mattress. He thought he was special. The young ones always did. As if life hadn't yet dropped them on their own two feet. As if it hadn't dropped them down enough. She pulled the sheet back up over her shoulder and turned her back on the boy. The bed shifted as if the kid had taken her move as an invitation.

"Show some fuckin' respect and get yer skinny ass off the bed when the lady tells ya to," a gruff voice made itself known from the open doorway. The owner of the voice was leaning up against the doorframe. The obscenely thick arms were crossed in front of his chest and it was a sight that could frighten even the most jaded fighter.

"She'll make me move ya if ya don't do it yourself, kid," the man said. The young boy scrambled off the bed and hastily scurried out of the room with his clothes tucked under one arm.

"Ya sure do pick 'em young."

The woman ignored the comment. She stood up from the bed and let the purple sheet fall to the ground. Pale skin stretched across a toned body that most men would have admired for its athletic strength if it had been put on display on a battle field and not in an extravagantly furnished bedroom like this one.

"Come inside and close the door after you," she said. The man did as she asked and stepped inside the room, noiselessly shutting the door after him.

"Is something wrong?" she asked and walked across the room towards her vanity, presenting her smooth back to the man as she sat down in front of the old antiquity. "You know better than to come here for a chit chat."

The man snorted. "I don't chit chat."

There was a pause in which the woman studied the man's face through the mirror.

"You have not asked for me to put on a robe."

"Ya forbade me to have sex, so I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the view. What I really want right now is fer ya to get on yer knees and suck me off."

She broke into a pearly laughter at his blunt attitude, although she had not expected anything less from him.

"Well, I do the orders around here and not the other way around, pet."

"Careful with the names now, Tora. We both know I could kill ya where ya stand. Gloriously naked or not."

"You flatter me," she said, her playful mood gone. "Now tell me what brings you here."

"The men want to free Sasaki," he said so straightforwardly that she couldn't stop her brows from jumping skywards.

"You are warning me," she said softly, picking up her hairbrush from the vanity and running her fingers up and down the handle thoughtfully. "How cute."

"This is no laughing matter, Tora."

Sakamoto sighed and put down the brush.

"I am perfectly aware of that, Hisashi. However, there is nothing I can do about your incompetence as team leader. You were the ones to get Sasaki captured and imprisoned in the very first place. You failed and this is the consequence of failure."

To his credit, Fukuda faced Sakamoto's blunt words standing ramrod straight in the center of the room. He didn't fully acknowledge her superiority over him, but he didn't cast it aside either. Granted, he got away with a lot of disobedient stuff, but that was only natural since the two of them were cousins. When your boss was also your cousin, you got a lot of work perks. Such as lenience and an overabundance of do-overs.

"If ya don't give the order, I can't guarantee that ma men won't start a riot."

"You underestimate me."

He waited and tried to gauge her mood before saying more. He gave up that task pretty quickly. His cousin was unreadable. He was probably the one who could read her the best, and when he failed at doing so, it meant that Sakamoto was in really bad mood.

"Are ya willing ta risk it?" he tried a last time.

Her eyes lowered to her lap and she pretended to brush something off her thigh. Fukuda hated how his attention immediately went to that part of her anatomy, as though she really had trained him to be her pet and react to her every movement. Most men would take it as an invitation that she was prancing around naked in front of them. But Fukuda knew an invitation would be her telling him to fuck her and not anything else. His cousin wasn't subtle.

Finally Sakamoto gave another sigh and caught Fukuda's eyes in the mirror.

"I will take your advice into consideration," she said. "But for the time being you will stay put and not leave your posts."

She pursed her lips as if she had experienced a sudden second thought.

"Speaking of posts, did you hire a new piano player for Aiko's stage show? The poor girl was devastated when Rika quit."

"It's been taken care of."

"Perfect. Will you do me a favor once you leave and tell her that she will be back on stage Monday night?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now get over here."

Fukuda made no move to come near her. "Clumsy kid ain't good enough, so ya ask for ma dick instead?"

"Something like that, yes," she said, overlooking the vulgarity of his words and gracefully turning around in her seat to face him. "I might even grant you your wish from earlier."

He raised a brow. "Ya removing yer restriction on me?"

"My poor, deluded cousin," she patronized him with a small smile. "I am the exception to your restriction."

He scowled at the fair-skinned temptress sitting by the vanity, but he couldn't ignore the insistent throbbing in his groin that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Fucking woman had him hooked and wrapped around her finger. She said 'jump' and he did it.

"Manipulative bitch."

She rolled her eyes and stood up, fed up with the banter. "Stop with the whining and fuck me, Hisashi."

There was the invitation.

"If the lady commands it."

* * *

Okada village was the sort of community where a new face would be the headlining attraction of the year if the harvest had failed. It was isolated, small and inbred within the next decade. It was the ideal place to sneak off to if you were planning to either have an affair or give birth to a bastard child.

"That is your conclusion?"

"Theory," Sakura corrected the village leader as politely as possible.

Imagawa Kaito was a man of many words and his responsibility as village leader of Okada village had taught him how to use them well. Unfortunately, words didn't come all that quickly to him when three foreigners stepped forward and slapped him in the face with their theory about Sasaki Fumio. His imprisonment of Sasaki Fumio was his pride of the week. And strangers were trying to steal his pride from him, despite the fact that he had asked the strangers for assistance himself. It was the irony of politics.

"If it is possible, we would like to interrogate the suspect as soon as-"

"He is no suspect," Imagawa cut in firmly. "He has already been charged with theft and will be judged guilty of the crime."

The proclamation had reeked of corrupt governing, but Sakura doubted that the man himself was aware of it. He fit her criteria for 'thickheaded chauvinistic simpleton' down to the last letter. She hated small villages like these. They never listened to reason. _The smaller the_mind, the greater the conceit. Sakura couldn't help but feel pity for the village that was led by a man who obviously didn't know how to both lead and stay objective while doing it. You weren't a good leader just because you repeatedly voted in favor of yourself.

"Kaito-sama," Kakashi said. "I believe it would serve all of us best if we got to speak with the man today. If you don't mind us asking, could you tell us how he was caught?"

"I caught him."

Sakura was pretty sure that Kakashi had asked how and not who, but unsurprisingly Imagawa hadn't heard it that way.

"Should we move outside my office and have a look at the prisoner, then?"

They were keeping Sasaki Fumio in a guarded cell located next to Imagawa's office building. The medic in Sakura noted with some satisfaction that unlike any of the prisoners that she had been sent in to heal after Ibiki's interrogation sessions back home, this prisoner looked remarkably well and healthy. He wasn't pacing the cramped space of the cell like a caged animal, as they often did in the beginning. But he wasn't huddled in the corner either, cradling his head in his hands and looking deathly sick. While this pleased her, she didn't know if it was a good thing. He would have been easier to interrogate if he had been on his deathbed. But you didn't just wish for people to die, no matter how evil or cruel they were. That was inhuman.

Imagawa gestured for the two guards that flanked Sasaki's cell to move aside.

"Sasaki," Imagawa spat. Unprofessional didn't even begin to cover his behavior towards the criminal. Sasaki lifted his head at the sound of his name and Sakura was initially stunned by the intensity of the clear green eyes staring back at them from behind the bars. It was eyes that belonged on a cat. An animal.

"You here again already?" Sasaki asked. His voice was a bright as his eyes, but one would be a fool to underestimate a person based its voice. You didn't judge a book by its cover. You didn't judge a book by its cover when it could kill you with the flick of a wrist.

"And you brought friends," the prisoner sneered condescendingly and moved closer to the bars, his catlike eyes coming to rest on Sakura in particular.

"They are here to interrogate you," Imagawa said and tried to look nonchalant about keeping a safe distance between him and the cell. It didn't work. He was scared.

Sasaki laughed and it was a sound that chilled Sakura's bones. "This freak show? They are here to interrogate me?"

Sakura could feel Naruto tense up next to her, probably ready to spit something back, but Kakashi stepped in and took control of the situation.

"I take it he can't access his chakra resources?" he asked Imagawa, referring to the simple metal bars and how a ninja easily could have escaped those and yet Sasaki had done nothing of the sort.

Imagawa nodded. "According to one of our medics we were lucky enough that he sustained an injury during his capture that has damaged-"

"Bullshit," Sasaki hissed, his hands tightening around the bars. "I'm perfectly fine."

He looked like a feral cat caught in a cage.

"If you were fine you would have attempted to escape by now," Sakura pointed out, not liking how little it took to fuel the man's aggressive behavior. He removed his hands from the bars and took his sweet time leering at her, his eyes roaming down her body in a way that could not be mistaken for anything else than lust. If she hadn't been a professional – unlike a certain other village leader in the room – the disgust she felt in that moment would have flooded her face. As it was, she kept her face blank.

"Maybe this is a part of my plan, bitch," Sasaki said. "Did you think of that?"

"Don't talk to her like that," Naruto cut in. The leer on Sasaki's face grew more pronounced as he stepped up even closer to the bars, pressing his forehead against the metal. Sakura noticed how Imagawa mirrored Sasaki's move and backed up until he was standing a little behind Kakashi and Naruto.

"And who is to stop me from doing it? You, kid?" Sasaki chuckled. "Now, that's what I call a fucking joke."

"Naruto," Kakashi warned and reached out to place a restrictive hand on the younger man's shoulder. The green kitty cat eyes were back on Sakura.

"It seems like I have brought out the jealous streak in your boyfriend, hm?"

She didn't take the bait and Tsunade would have patted her on shoulder for it.

"What's your real name?"

Sakura almost patted herself on her shoulder when Sasaki's leer was wiped off his face. He stepped away from the bars as though they had burnt him. Sakura considered that a victory.

"So the little bitch wants to play adult games," he said with his back turned on them. Sakura allowed a scowl to run across her face, knowing that he couldn't see it.

"Answer," Imagawa demanded, taking charge now that Sasaki's threatening behavior had cooled down significantly. The man really wasn't doing anything to make Sakura respect him.

"What's in it for me?"

"You weren't willing to make a deal before."

"Actually," Sasaki said as he turned around and faced them once more with a nasty grin on his face. "I wasn't willing to make a deal with you. Imagawa Kaito. But I am interested in knowing what these freaks can offer me in return for my services."

Imagawa blanched and Sakura sent Kakashi a subtle look. She was silently asking him how he wanted them to deal with the situation. He didn't respond to her look, but she was sure he could feel it.

"One of us is a medic. She can heal your injury before it inflicts permanent damage," he finally said and reached up to pull his hitai-ate into its right position. It no longer sat skewed on his head but now revealed both of his eyes. He kept the Sharingan closed for now, but Sakura knew what was coming and what her part would be to play.

"Little bitch has skills?"

There was no collective gasp when Kakashi's Sharingan was activated, although Sasaki wisely averted his eyes to the ground, the thick muscles in his neck tightening and making purple veins stand out in stark contrast to his white skin.

"What's that for?" he asked, no trace of emotion in his voice.

"To see if you should choose to lie."

"What do you wanna know?"

"The location of Sakamoto Tora."

"Fuck, I don't have that," he laughed. "Who do you think I am?"

Not Sasaki Fumio, Sakura thought briefly.

"Fukuda Hisashi?"

Sasaki shrugged a shoulder. "Ain't got his location either."

Sakura stepped forward, almost all the way up the bars, and Sasaki's feline eyes studied her face closely. She could feel Naruto's familiar presence behind her and thought for a fleeting second that he must have shadowed her when she stepped forward.

"I'm also quite skilled at vasectomies," she spoke softly, holding Sasaki's gaze so he would know she wasn't bluffing. "Sometimes I find satisfaction in performing them on my most obstinate patients. You would be in that category. If there was ever any doubt."

His face darkened and he seemed to be weighing his options.

"Waterfall. Close to the border would be my guess," he said. "That's where I've heard her to permanently reside when she ain't doing business. They don't keep us near her, though. Only Fukuda goes there."

"Business? What business is she doing?"

"How many fucking questions do you get?" Sasaki asked, obviously uncomfortable with having to betray his superior. "Shit, if I was her confidant don't you think she would have broken me outta here by now?"

Imagawa cleared his throat, adding: "There has been no sign of any strangers wandering around in the village."

Sakura felt like pointing out that if you were to free someone from captivity you didn't exactly 'wander around', but she felt that it would be lost cause. The man was as dumb as a stick lying on the bottom of a lake. She looked towards Kakashi who was quietly studying Sasaki with his beloved Sharingan, and she came to the conclusion that Kakashi would have made some comment by now if Sasaki hadn't been truthful in his answers.

That meant she had to stick to their end of the deal.

"I need to get inside the cell."

Imagawa blinked at her, his face a pitiful ashen grey color. "Why?"

"I need to heal him."

"But… he already gave you the information."

Clearly she was not getting her point across.

"Yes. I need to uphold my part of the deal. I need a key to the cell," she repeated slowly.

"Guards have it. I'll be right back," he said, scurrying out of the room to go fetch the key.

"And you say we have no honor," Sasaki mumbled quietly from inside his cell. Sakura was relieved that the man didn't know of any sick jutsu that would have allowed him to read her thoughts, because in that moment the two of them shared the exact same opinion.

"You don't," Naruto answered, but Sakura knew that he was thinking the same thing as her. Everyone in the room, if not the entire village, was thinking the same thing as her.

"If you try anything I won't hesitate to kill you," Sakura warned the man behind the bars.

He sent her a wolfish grin. "You're kinda feisty."

She smirked back. "And you'll be kinda dead if you keep that up."

* * *

She woke up because she thought she had swallowed a bucket of wet cotton.

It took her a full minute to realize that what really had awakened her was the sweltering heat inside the room. It was worse than the summer nights back home, and Fire Country was known for its intolerable summers where it often got hot enough for your skin to melt off your bones. Not a very beautiful image, but nevertheless still true.

They were spending the night in Okada village. Imagawa had been immensely pleased by that seeing that his captive no longer was handicapped. Tomorrow, they would move on to Waterfall and try to locate Fukuda and the stolen jewelry. Perhaps they might bump into Sakamoto and perhaps they wouldn't. At any rate, they couldn't engage in fight unless she outright instigated it herself. Their mission objective was to fetch the jewelry, not to play cat and mouse with a mistress of poisons. But they could still try to snatch up some information regarding Sakamoto; information that would benefit other teams and other missions that directly involved taking down Sakamoto's empire. Their mission did not involve that, and so regrettably they had to stick to the jewelry and try to avoid Sakamoto personally. They simply didn't have the manpower or resources to do anything bigger than fetching the stolen jewelry. It was politics.

"Air," Sakura mumbled groggily and sat up in her bed. She pushed the sheets to the floor in the process. She had seen a window in here earlier, hadn't she? Naruto was sleeping in the bunk across from hers, blissfully unaware of her predicament. If she had bothered to look at the third bunk behind her, she would have noticed that it was untouched.

Grabbing Naruto's jacket from where he had thrown it on the floor earlier, she slipped it on and padded over to the window. It might be hot, but she was not risking being attacked in her underwear. She pushed the curtains aside with a sweep of her hand and spent a few good minutes trying to figure out how to open the damn thing.

Then she finally shoved it open. And banged it straight into someone's head.

Her instincts kicked in as her hand grabbed for a kunai in a belt pouch that wasn't there. Reckless, she managed to think before another realization hit her. She knew that head. But what was Kakashi doing sitting outside at three in the morning?

"It appears that you haven't lost your touch after all," Kakashi said from the other side of the window, and his voice chased back the adrenaline that had arisen within her.

"What the hell are you doing?" she grumbled, discreetly zipping up Naruto's oversized jacket and leaning her torso out the window.

"Making sure that no one should try to molest my daughter in her sleep."

"What? Oh, yeah. That time with the brunette. I guess I should apologize for that."

Kakashi didn't answer her and she didn't feel like saying an outright 'I'm sorry', which was probably what he was waiting for. Instead she grabbed hold of the upper window frame and maneuvered her legs outside. The rest of her followed until she was sitting on the dewy, uneven ground next to Kakashi.

"Really, what are you doing out here?" she insisted, pushing stray locks of hair away from her eyes and trying to ignore how the dew from the grass clung to the back of her bare legs where Naruto's jacket wasn't long enough to cover her skin.

"Clearing my head," Kakashi said simply. Insomnia was a general disease among ninjas.

"To make room for porn, I see," she said instead, referring to the open book in his lap.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing."

"I've seen the illustrations," she said, looking up at the sky because it was too dark to look anywhere else, really. "Naruto and Sasuke bought one for shits and giggles last year."

And she remembered the incident very clearly. After having seen one illustration, she had studied them all down to the last detail. At the time she had wanted to blame it on her blossoming medic career – it was the human body and she worked with the human body – but then Naruto had caught her doing it a second time and he had called her a closet pervert. After that episode she had been forced to admit that perhaps Naruto hadn't been completely in the wrong after all.

"Is that what men want?" Sakura broke the silence. Her eyes were now fixed on the book in Kakashi's lap and no longer the sky.

"Hm?" he asked, turning his head to look at her.

"Is it what you want?" she rephrased the question.

He stared at her unblinkingly.

"Are you asking me about my preference in women?"

"I already know that, I think. No, I meant generally."

She ransacked her brain to think of an example and came up with one fairly quickly: "If I asked Sasuke, he would want someone docile. Someone that would be compliant and not question his decisions. Does that apply to all men?"

If it did, Sakura was royally screwed.

"Sasuke is not a very good example of the common man, Sakura."

"Well…," she hesitated, embarrassment starting to catch up with her. "That's why I'm asking you what you want."

"I'm not a very good example either," he smiled beneath his mask and picked up his book, flipping it open. He must have put the book down when she had smacked him with the window. The cold from the ground was starting to seep into her body, but now she was fully awake and didn't want to go back inside the sauna that she had woken up in. She had to think of something else. Experiencing a sudden epiphany, she looked down at the small gap that was in between her and Kakashi's bodies and thought that Kakashi would be too preoccupied with his precious book to notice if she should scoot closer. Subtly, of course.

She should have known that nothing could ever entirely claim the Copy Ninja's attention though.

"Cold?" he asked with his eye still roaming the pages of his book, and Sakura froze before she had even fully convinced herself to move in the first place.

"A bit," she shrugged, forcing her body to relax because there was no way in hell she was scooting closer to the perceptive idiot now.

"Where does that bruise come from?"

She looked at him confusedly. "Huh?"

"The one on your leg," he elaborated, slowly flipping a page with a slender finger that Sakura probably shouldn't have noticed was beautifully slender to begin with. Oh well.

"Naruto gave it to me the day before we left," she answered, carefully poking at the darkened skin on her lower left thigh with a finger. Half of it was visible, but the top part of the bruise was hidden by the hem of Naruto's jacket. She hadn't healed it because it was only a minor bruise and Tsunade had always reminded her that just because you were a medic, it would still be unwise to forget how the simplest of bruises felt on your body.

"I broke a few knuckles of his, but I healed them afterwards," she smiled fondly and looked up to find that Kakashi had lowered his book and was staring at her leg as though it had mutated into a spider infested log. She had to look down a second time to assure herself that it really hadn't mutated into a log.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"You should probably heal it," Kakashi suggested offhandedly, closing his book and standing up.

Something was off with the conversation, but she couldn't pinpoint exactly what. And Kakashi gave her nothing to go by. As usual. There was nothing to read on his face and it had nothing to do with his mask. It was that careful blankness that you had to have been on the receiving end of enough times for you to pull it off yourself.

"I've travelled with worse," she said and got to her feet as well, though not as gracefully as Kakashi.

"With two broken arms I would still be up to par with you two slackers," she said and received a very unamused look in return.

"Willing to put that to a test?" Kakashi asked and it was her turn to give him an unamused look.

"Try it and I'll break your neck before you've finished the thought."

"Somehow that threat doesn't really work when you're wearing that outfit," he said, speaking with drawn out syllables as if getting up from the ground had exhausted him.

"Outfit?"

"Too much leg to appear very threatening, don't you agree?"

Her mouth dropped open, but when she finally managed to piece together an intelligent reply that didn't involve her sputtering profanities like a balloon slowly loosing air, Kakashi's silver mop of hair had disappeared from sight.

Something had been off, yes, and the swirling warmth low in her stomach telling her that Kakashi had taken notice of her legs was definitely not welcome either. If Ino had been there she would have laughed, a cackling and shrill sound that would had irritated Sakura to no end. But Sakura still couldn't help but really wish that Ino had been there, because then she could have joined in on the laughter and pretended to laugh it all off.

As it was, she just shook her head and climbed back inside through the window.

* * *

"How much?"

"203.012," Fukuda reported and put the money down on Sakamoto's desk.

"Not as good as yesterday," she said.

"It'll even out after tomorrow. It's tha weekend. Lotsa customers and Aiko will be back on after Sunday."

"I suppose," Sakamoto sighed and ran a hand through her matted hair. "Fucking cheapskates are killing my business. Where did all the pervs disappear off to? It sure as hell ain't my reputation that has gone down in the drain."

"I hate ta bring this up right now, but ma men are getting restless. Did ya make a decision yet?"

"Fetch him. Get Sasaki," she permitted with a flippant flick of her wrist. "And while you're there, find out who the idiot Imagawa has hired to track you down in order to retrieve the jewelry you fetched for me. There's no way that that jerkoff would ever consider retrieving it himself. He must have hired somebody."

She held a short pause, thinking matters over.

"And be subtle, Hisashi."

"When am I not?"

"When I forget to tell you to be, you big oaf."

"Ya know, the name-calling is getting real old."

"If you ask me, it's not the name-calling that's getting old. It's you."

* * *

**Edited March 4, 2013 **


	5. Chapter Four

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Four:**

The sky was crying and it had thoroughly soaked their clothes with its tears. It had been raining for hours on end. And it wasn't the flimsy type of rain. It was the steady thundering kind that seeped through your skin and bones in minutes. The three of them looked as though they were wearing color coordinated bodysuits when they finally crossed the border to Waterfall in the late afternoon of the following day. The rain had started as a fine drizzle around midday. Since then it had gradually increased to the heavy fall of rain that it was now. It was the recipe for catching a cold. Despite how often people loved to romanticize the ninja world, reality was that ninjas got sick just as easily as the farmer next door who had never made a backflip in his life.

It was also the fifth time that the wet and clingy material of Sakura's outer cloak made her trip over nothing.

"I can't say I have missed this part," she said to Naruto who was walking beside her. The energetic bounce to his steps was a pain to look at. Even more of a pain than her soggy pink hair. She should have cut her hair pre-mission. She had let it grow a little past her shoulders in the time that she had worked at the hospital, but now she remembered why she had kept it short in her younger years. At the moment, her hair was clotting her eyes and obscuring her vision to a point where Kakashi, who was walking ahead of them, seemed to blend in with the air air without even trying.

"The rain?" Naruto asked.

She swept the pink curtain away from her eyes, so she could give her friend a flat stare. They were being assaulted by an endless stream of mud, water and drowned insects.

"Yes. The rain, Naruto."

He grinned and touched the tip of his nose with his thumb. "It's not that bad. We could have gotten a mission in Snow country."

"Snow doesn't hammer your flesh off your face," she answered and grimaced when she felt a new clammy spot on her back where her cloak had given up fighting the rain. Perhaps the hospital life had pampered her, but wet clothes were just never comfortable.

"You two keeping up back there?"

"Right behind ya," Naruto yelled at Kakashi.

"So," the silver-haired man popped up behind them half a second later and made them both flinch. "I was thinking we should discuss what our next move will be."

"You have no plan?" Sakura asked and Kakashi's lone eye swept down to drift across her face.

"As captain I make the final decision." he said. "But I don't get to play dictator. I would like your input."

"Oh," Sakura smiled stiffly and figured that she had stepped right into that one. "Of course."

"What about the locals?" Naruto asked. "If what's-her-name lives around here permanently, there has to be rumors circulating among the villagers, right? Rumors that will lead us to the jewelry?"

"That's a lot of ground to cover even if we spread out to save time. And we still wouldn't know where to start, since Sasaki didn't exactly specify Sakamoto's location."

"There's a village not far from here. We can start our search there and work our way outward along the border until we find trace of Fukuda and the jewelry," Kakashi concluded.

"Works for me," Naruto said and raised his arms high above his head, stretching his back with a series of subdued yawns that had him accidentally eat rainwater before he figured out to lower his head and yawn into his chest instead.

Sakura turned to Kakashi. "How can you be sure that there's a village close by?"

"Carriage trails."

Sakura looked down and silently berated herself for not noticing it herself. Despite the muddy surface of the road, there were clear thick ragged lines imbedded deep within in the soil. So deep that water couldn't completely remove them, which meant that the trails could only have been made by wheels carrying heavy loads.

"It must be a trade route," she said out loud. "It takes constant use for any trails to become this imbedded in the ground. Which means there has to be a village at the end of the road. Whenever that is. Alright. I should have figured that out myself."

They stumbled upon the first village outpost half an hour later. An outpost meant that this village was larger in size than Okada village. And hopefully also a more structured if they were to have any chance of tracking down the jewelry before the end of the month. The station was cleverly hidden among the gnarled trunks of oak trees, and if the three of them hadn't picked up on the chakra signatures leaking out from the cluster of those trees, they most likely would have walked right past the outpost without identifying themselves. Kakashi worked his charm on the person in charge of the outpost and they were granted access. Sakura didn't know if she should feel relieved or disturbed by the fact that the two men hadn't recognized three fellow ninjas. They had suppressed their chakra, sure, but it was more about posture and attitude than anything else.

Ten minutes after having passed the outpost, they came to a halt where the road curved into a hill. On top of that hill they had the perfect view of the grand bustling village that lay below.

"Alright," Kakashi said as he scratched his chin through the unforgiving material of his mask. "This is our assembly point. We meet back here in an hour and I won't waste time on explaining how important it is that we lay low for now. Understood? Go."

Sakura and Naruto took off simultaneously. Sakura took off in a northerly direction and Naruto in a westerly one. They fell back into the pattern that they had created together after Sasuke's departure. The pattern that he had never really been invited back into. And that was all his own fault.

* * *

It had finally stopped raining, but after having wandered the northern streets of the village for half an hour with no result at all, Sakura had grudgingly come to the conclusion that the village and its villagers were both horribly ordinary and horribly ambiguous at the same time.

"No, I'm not familiar with that name."

"Are you absolutely certain, ma'am?"

"Oh yes, dear. I'm very good at remembering names and faces," the old lady assured her where she stood by the water well. She was twisting brown water out of a washing cloth. Sakura was worried that her frail hands couldn't withstand the pressure of the action, but the old lady didn't seem to be in pain.

"Are you not terribly hot under that large hood?"

"I get sunburned easily," Sakura answered politely. It was only a half lie. She reached up to adjust the hood in a moment of self-consciousness. The rain had given away to the sun and while the temperature had definitely risen, Sakura knew better than to offer up anything to anybody that could help identify her. In this case her hair and eyes. Kakashi had told them to lay low. The brown hood stayed where it was. Even if a hood in sunny weather conditions was as obvious as her pink hair would have been in any weather condition. It was about picking the lesser of two evils. Sakura was pulled out of her impromptu reverie by a child's voice.

"Grandma? Who is that woman?"

The grandmother turned to Sakura with a friendly smile that displayed poor tooth care.

"Well, what is your name, dear?"

"Hitomi," Sakura lied smoothly. "And I should get going now. Thank you for your time, ma'am."

"You might try the blacksmith at the end of this road," the woman suggested to Sakura's retreating back. "He is our only one since his father died. He should know if anybody with that name lives around here."

From the moment that Sakura entered the suffocating heat of the blacksmith's workshop and laid eyes on the brute of a man occupying the messy space with his imposing presence, she knew the conversation would be mostly one sided. She would talk and the man would throw in a grunt or growl wherever he saw it fit. She was not looking forward to it.

"Excuse me?"

"What can I do fer ya, lady?"

Surprisingly there was no grunt, but his accent was so thick that she wondered if he was a westerner. She quickly let go of that theory though. His features were unmistakably not western.

"Need a touch-up on somethin'? Or maybe a new weapon for ya brother?"

She didn't blame him for thinking that she wouldn't need one for herself. She was in disguise after all.

"No, it's nothing of that sort, sir."

The blacksmith put down his hammer and wiped his hands on his shirt. Grime was ingrained beneath his flaking nails and his hands were worn the way you saw it with most men in his profession. Although, if Sakura were to be honest, her hands weren't the epitome of femininity either. Handling a variety of different weapons ever since childhood did that to your skin, no matter what products Ino said you should use to minimize the damage.

"Do you have a minute to answer a question, sir?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders and scratched the black stubble on his jaw.

"Do you know of a woman named Sakamoto Tora?"

"Neva' heard of her," he grunted.

Sakura was trained to be perceptive. She had been trained to never take her eyes off whoever she was facing and this time it was no different. That was why she noticed the flicker of recognition in the blacksmith's deep-set eyes. Then he turned his back on her. He had lied. Just like everybody else, he did not Sakamoto Tora. And he probably knew her a lot better than any other persons Sakura had talked to today. This was a lead. She had to follow up on it.

"Was tha' all?" the large man asked and picked up the hammer where he had put it down earlier.

Sakura took his clear dismissal as her cue to leave. But her planned exit was stalled when another man stepped into the dimly lit workshop. His steel blue eyes immediately zeroed in on her and nailed her feet to the ground. This man was no common stranger like the rest of the townsfolk. With the reality and the possible consequences of that thought, Sakura forced her feet to move. She quickly wormed her way past the blue eyed man with a soft and barely audible: "Excuse me."

* * *

"Excuse me."

He watched the petite cloaked figure scurry out of the workshop and something akin to mild interest flashed across his face at the weak spark of chakra he had felt sting his skin when she had passed him in her hurry.

"She was askin' fer yer lady boss," Ryota rumbled, noticing how Fukuda's gaze lingered on where the woman had disappeared off to.

"When don't they ask fer ma cousin?"

"This one sounded serious, I warn ya," the blacksmith said. "Real serious, that one."

"We're headin' out to fetch Sasaki tonight. I need weapons."

"That's a damn short notice."

"Well, what can ya give me on such a short notice?" Fukuda rephrased his request, making sure that his tone was sinister enough to make the other man understand that he wasn't leaving the workshop empty-handed. He didn't care if he would be carrying the dimwitted blacksmith's head on a stick to battle or a brand new sword in his right hand. He just wasn't leaving empty-handed. That wasn't a concept that was very hard to grasp if he had to say so himself.

"Wadja want?"

"Shouldn't ya know my preferences by now?"

"Ya change them all tha time."

* * *

So it had been him, Sakura thought and lowered her body into a crouch. Sitting there, on the rooftop of the building situated directly across from the workshop, she could watch Fukuda leave the blacksmith with a bag thrown carelessly over one fit shoulder.

It really was Fukuda Hisashi. And he was planning a trip to Okada village.

She couldn't go after the bastard alone. The list of what could go wrong was too big for the reasonable part of her brain to ignore. She caught herself halfway into the act of clenching her fist and quickly forced her fingers to relax.

She had to let him go.

Later that evening, she sat with Kakashi and Naruto in the secluded corner of a random tavern and discussed the next step in their plan. Sakura herself had narrowed it down to two options.

Option one was shadowing Fukuda back to Okada village and stop him from freeing the imprisoned Sasaki.

Option two was continuing their search for the jewelry in the fashion they were doing it now.

Option one sucked because they would have to eventually reveal their presence to Sakamoto's most trusted minion. Option two sucked because once Sasaki was brought back from Imagawa's unqualified care, he could identify the three of them to both to Sakamoto and to Fukuda.

"We need to start using a transformation jutsu to alter out apperances," she said, rudely cutting off Kakashi who was in the middle of saying something that Sakura had totally spaced out on. She tugged at a lock of her cotton candy hair as if to illustrate her point. Naruto moved to sit up straighter in his seat, his foot gliding down from where it had been braced against the table leg next to her ankles.

"Are we paying the blacksmith a second visit?"

"He's our only lead so far," Kakashi said and motioned for Naruto to scoot over.

"Don't have too much fun while I'm gone," he excused himself and wandered off towards the bathrooms in the back of the tavern. Sakura watched his tall figure disappear and only then noticed the look Naruto was giving her across the table.

"What?" she asked.

"I heard you talking with Kakashi-sensei last night."

"Naruto," she exclaimed. "You don't eavesdrop on private conversations."

"Private, eh?" he asked her with a shit-eating grin.

"Yes. What are you insinuating, anyway?"

"You're having private conversations with Kakashi-sensei. Kakashi-sensei stripped for you four times last year. You seem to be doing things backwards."

"It was his quarterly physical, Naruto," Sakura ground out. "He had to strip if I was to do a satisfactory examination."

"Satisfactory examination?"

"Yes, satisfactory examination."

"I bet his face was really satisfactory," Naruto said and put his elbow down on the table so he could rest his chin in his palm.

"Well, you wouldn't know, now would you?"

In fact, Kakashi's face hadn't been the kind that made you drop your jaw and eat dirt. It didn't hold the feminine beauty that Neji and Sasuke were blessed – or cursed – with. But it hadn't been the rugged kind like Kiba's and Shikamaru's either. Sakura had always known that Kakashi's nose had had a gentle slope to it, but that soft curve had been so much more pronounced once the mask had come off. And together with the sleek line of his jaw and chin, Sakura might have ogled the man's face for a good full minute. Then she had promptly stuck a needle into his arm and completely missed the vein that she had been aiming for. The other nurses had teased her mercilessly about that. At the time she had been too embarrassed to apologize for it. Actually, she never got around to really apologize for it. Maybe that was why he had stopped talking to her? No, he didn't hold grudges like that. But it was his face and he was strangely protective of his face, so it might actually have played a part in him ignoring her for months on end.

"Sakura?"

She blinked. "Yes?"

"You were zoning out."

"Sorry," she apologized and reached across the table to flick his nose with her finger.

"Hey-"

"I can see you didn't trash the table."

"We're past those years, sensei," Sakura joked weakly and watched Kakashi flop back down in the seat that he had abandoned minutes earlier. His eye caught hers and she turned her head to look out the grimy window. Kakashi rarely ever gave anybody the time of the day unless it benefitted him somehow, so when he finally chose to give you his full attention, it tended to somewhat freak people out. Sakura was no exception. People like Kakashi and Sasuke didn't look at you. They studied you like a pet in a zoo.

Wait.

Had Kakashi known that Naruto had been eavesdropping yesterday?

A wave of irritation rushed over her. Well, shit. It was no well-kept secret that the majority of women gravitated towards men that they could repair or fix somehow, but Sakura just had to have some sort of magnetic field around her body that attracted only the mentally challenged guys. She was really not seeking out those nutheads on purpose. The only men she could really speak of as being hers were Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi. And they weren't the cream of the crop when it came to being ordinary. Her future was destined to look horribly bleak on the love front. Not that she had expected different, honestly. It just wasn't a priority of hers. If she had really wanted it, she would have sought it out by now. She hadn't. She wrenched her eyes away from the window when she felt Naruto poke her side.

"You're spacing out again."

"Sorry," she apologized and rubbing her neck not because it hurt, but because it gave her something to do.

"Where is it we're sleeping tonight? I don't know if I've already asked…?"

"I've booked us rooms across the street," Kakashi told her with a flick of his wrist that probably should have shown her in which direction the building lay. But if she was to believe that, it would have been located somewhere underneath their table.

An elderly man stepped up to their table. They had all felt him approaching.

"You're the ones that are looking for that Sakamoto bitch, aren't you?"

"And you are?" Kakashi asked, feigning disinterest and doing it wonderfully well.

"Try this," the man said and pulled out a small card from his breast pocket. He put the card down on the table in front of Sakura, who in return stared at the scarlet square of paper as if it was disease-ridden. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but in the last second he seemed to change his mind and left their table with a slight limp in his walk that for some reason piqued Sakura's interest.

Pushing that thought aside, she picked up the card and studied it.

"What does it say?" Naruto asked with the subtlety of a rampaging horse. He stretched out his neck to get a better look at the card, and Sakura pushed him back in his seat.

"Peach… Parfait," she read aloud. "Peach Parfait."

The question mark displayed on Naruto's face matched the one on hers. "What's that?"

"How would I know?" she asked, shooting him an irritated look.

"It doesn't say more?" Kakashi broke into their dialogue.

"Nothing besides the name and a road number a little outside of the village," Sakura said and handed him the card. She was very careful not to let her fingers brush his.

"I guess we're no longer paying the blacksmith a visit," he said and held up the card between two of his fingers, twisting it around as though it was a 3-dimensional art piece and Sakura and Naruto had failed to see its artistic potential.

"We'll do a day of surveillance," Kakashi said. "And then we'll figure out what to do after that."

"Fukuda won't be around tomorrow." Sakura said. "But in two days both he and Sasaki may be."

"We are hired by Imagawa to retrieve his stolen heirloom," Kakashi reminded both of them in a mild manner that betrayed the reprimand he was about to give them. "Our mission is not to prove Sakamoto and her acquaintances guilty of any other crime than this one."

* * *

She couldn't fall asleep. Her eyeballs were aching and it felt as though a rhino had placed its flabby butt right down on her feet. And yet she was still awake. She changed position from her back to her stomach for what felt like the twentieth time in five minutes. Sakura suffered from frequent insomnia, but the problem usually didn't peak this badly during missions. Usually because missions tired you out and were the perfect cure to insomnia. This time, this was not the case. Regrettably.

"That's it," she said and sat up, hurling the thin covers off her body. She yanked on her old clothes that she had thrown to the floor, and tiptoed out into the eerily silent corridor outside of her room.

Kakashi never slept.

She found his door within a matter of minutes and turned the doorknob, pushing the large piece of wood open with her shoulder.

"If I hadn't sensed it was you, you would be dead now."

She rolled her eyes and closed the door behind her. "I vote for an enemy exchange if yours are nice enough to use the door."

Kakashi's comfortably slouched frame emerged from the adjacent bathroom and Sakura took in his disarrayed state with an irksome flutter to her chest. He had discarded his vest, which in and of itself wasn't all that uncommon, but it left him in the black shirt he wore underneath. And it was the black shirt that pissed Sakura off. It pissed her off, because of course the fabric looked as though it had been sculpted to fit the hard planes of his torso like spray-on skin. The hitai-ate was gone as well, she noticed, and his hair no longer stood up straight, but fell in heavy layers down the sides of his head instead.

"Hot."

He blinked.

"It was hot," she said. "I couldn't fall asleep."

"So you decided to make sure you wouldn't be alone in your predicament?" he asked and crossed the room with lazy steps, walking past her where she still stood by the entrance.

"No," she dragged out the word, distracted by him parading around in the room. "I wanted to continue our talk, I guess."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and the colorful bedspread wrinkling underneath the added weight.

"Now?"

"Well, Naruto is dead to the world and I figured you wouldn't be asleep yet," she explained as if it justified her spontaneous course of action. She discretely crossed her arms in front of her chest and successfully trapped herself within the illusion of private space. She didn't fully understand why she needed private space, but she felt infinitely better now that she had fooled herself into believing it was there.

"So, what was it you wanted?" Kakashi asked and leant forward, resting his arms on his knees.

"For you to answer the question I asked you back at Okada village," she said and finally dared to take a step closer to the bed.

"You can sit down," he offered.

"I know."

"You didn't have to come here if it makes you uncomfortable," he continued and the soft sarcasm was not lost on her. In fact, it only served to make her regret entering the room in the first place. This Kakashi was different from the one yesterday night, but she couldn't pinpoint what it was that made him so different. He was the same person. But he was also more persons at the same time.

"I'm not uncomfortable. Give me some credit," she said.

He gave her a blank stare instead, one that picked up her nerves from around the room and injected them straight back into her stomach.

"You knew what Sasuke wanted in a woman," he said, running his fingers along the masked contour of his jaw and chin. "And I bet you also know what Naruto want in that regard."

She hated that her next question came out with an undertone of anticipation to it, because what was there to anticipate?

"What are you hinting at?"

"I think I am no exception to that rule. You know what I want, so why do you ask?"

There was a long pause where the air in between the two of them seemed to flicker and buzz with expectancy. Expectancy of how Sakura would formulate her response. The long awaiting elephant in the room stretched out its thick snout and curled the appendage tightly around Sakura's neck. She was caught. But she had done this herself, so she was to blame for it.

"If I hadn't stepped inside my apartment, but had asked you a second time," she began, her voice surprisingly steady considering what she was about to bring up. "Would you have done what I asked?"

It was a staring match. There really was no other way to explain how they surveyed each other in the following momentous seconds.

"Yes."

The pressure around her neck was snapped away as the elephant dematerialized before her eyes.

"Don't joke about this. I want a serious answer."

Kakashi sighed heavily from his spot on the bed. "I'm a man, Sakura. How did you expect me to react when an attractive woman, drunk or not, asks me to kiss her?"

Sakura was beyond the point of embarrassment. She just wanted answers.

"I expected you to kiss me. Obviously."

Kakashi stood up from the lumpy mattress and his impressive frame made Sakura swallow an extra time. He wasted valuable time on cording his fingers through the thick mane of silver hair on top of his head. She tried not to notice how the muscles of his arm and shoulder flexed with the movement, but the fact that she had to ignore it meant that she definitely had noticed it.

"Tell me, why am I being made out to be the one at fault here?" Kakashi asked.

"I wasn't aware that any of us were at fault. I just thought we should talk this through. As adults."

"You want to talk this through as adults?" he asked, his voice taking on a slightly incredulous tone.

"Yes?"

She had meant to sound firm, but it came out as a hesitant question instead. A childlike question. This was not going well.

"Alright," Kakashi said and Sakura instantly knew that she had made a fatal mistake somewhere in their awkward conversation. Kakashi did not back down. He manipulated and he twisted your words and he lied, but he did not yield unless it served a purpose. His purpose.

"I wanted to kiss you, yes," he cut straight to the point and Sakura almost backed up from the sound of his voice alone.

"I also wanted to slam you up against the door of your apartment and ram myself into you until everybody would know what you were letting me do to you."

Intellectually, Sakura knew that he was saying this to scare her off. Kakashi eased up on his brutal frontal attack, when it looked as though Sakura was about to vomit all over the floor.

"You don't ask someone to kiss you, Sakura, unless you are prepared to face the consequences of it. Most men don't listen to boundaries and limitations in a situation like the one you put yourself-"

"And I'm supposed to feel grateful that you did?" Sakura finally came to her senses, her voice now hot with repressed anger that matched her flaming hot cheeks perfectly. She knew what she had asked him. It had played no role in the matter that alcohol had been circulating her blood stream at the time.

"Sakura, you are deliberately misunderstanding me-"

"And you are stalling, so you won't have to-"

"Sakura," Kakashi finally raised his voice and Sakura's mouth snapped shut. "You've overstayed your welcome. Go back to your room and get some sleep. We have an early day tomorrow."

The elephant was back, larger in size, and watched with bulging eyes as Sakura left the room. It was also the only one to see how Kakashi got up from his spot on the bed and locked the door after her.

* * *

**Edited March 5, 2013 **


	6. Chapter Five

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Five: **

She could remember the first time that she had referred to Naruto as being hers.

It had been around her sixteenth birthday and Ino had been her usual petty, nasty self and had decided to let them all in on a comment about Naruto that had rubbed Sakura the wrong way. She had told Ino that 'her Naruto' was not a salivating mutt and that Ino could shove it where the sun didn't shine, namely up her pale ass. Prior to that day Sakura had never questioned in what fashion she considered her boys to be hers, but Ino's guffawing response to her slip of the tongue had brought something fatal to her attention that evening.

She didn't own anyone but herself.

And yet here she was, sitting high up in a tree late at night and surveying the staff exit of a shabby-looking burlesque, while she wanted to own the one person who hadn't spoken a willing word to her for the past eight hours.

"_Come on, Kakashi-sensei_," Naruto's exasperated voice emitted from the electronic device that was securely attached to Sakura's ear.

"_No_."

"Give it up, Naruto," Sakura mumbled to herself, daring to take her eyes off the exit so she could rub some much needed movement into her stiff neck. She hated to question Kakashi's methods, as well as Tsunade's, but she couldn't help but be unreasonably pessimistic about this surveillance idea. In the interval of four hours, the vast amount of two men had used the exit. One to pee in the nearby bushes and one to smoke a cigarette before he took off with a prostitute draped all over him like a silky rug. Sakura would have loved to suspect that one guy of participating in criminal activities, but sadly sex with a prostitute didn't make you a criminal. Unless, of course, it was an old fart having a fetish for doing minors. Sakura would slice that one's neck without any hesitation.

Naruto should be deliriously happy. He had the public entrance and all the neatly dressed people who entered. Sakura got the sleazy pervs that left and somehow she got the feeling that it wasn't all coincidence. Kakashi wouldn't compromise their mission. He really was too professional in that sense. But given what had happened the previous night, Sakura was at a loss as to what to believe.

"…_ont. Sakura?"_

"Sorry, what?"

"_Come around to the front." _

"Coming."

Slipping off the branch and letting herself fall to the ground, she steered directly for the front of the building and towards Kakashi's location. As she stepped around the small weed-grown rock formation, she wasn't surprised to see that Naruto was already there, his face set in tight displeased lines. Kakashi stood beside him with one foot balanced against a fungus-infected tree stump and with his hands buried in his pockets. The visible part of his face was turned away from her, so she couldn't know if his mood matched Naruto's.

"Change of plans?" she asked.

"Not exactly," Kakashi answers and she was amazed that he had acknowledged her presence.

"We need custom made cards with an identification number in order to enter. People without it haven't been granted access," Naruto explained the second that he was given the green light by Kakashi.

"A high-end burlesque?" Sakura inquired with some skepticism.

"Security is too advanced for us to outsmart them in any other way," Kakashi elaborated with minimal enthusiasm. Normally she would have blamed it on his aloof nature. Now she was certain it was more deliberate than that.

"Okay. So, we'll just have to get a hold of such cards then, right?"

The question was meant for Kakashi – since he _was_ Captain, after all – but the man in question was so deeply engrossed in studying the moldy substance that grew on the slick sides of the rocks that he missed her words completely. That was how she chose to perceive it, and so Naruto ended up answering her question on behalf of the other man. Other immature neurotic nitwit of a man, her mind supplied and Sakura allowed the correction.

"Already on it, Sakura-chan," Naruto reassured her at the same time that Kakashi motioned for him to take off.

"Be quick about it," the older man ordered and with a quick, confident nod the blond man was off. Sakura immediately turned towards the older jonin.

"You're being immature."

When nothing indicated that he was going to acknowledge her comment, she changed tactics.

"You're a real ass."

Of course that tactic would have no effect on a man who regularly tolerated Naruto's x-rated mouth. There was an awkward break in the one-sided conversation while Sakura weighed her options and Kakashi seemingly remained occupied with watching the moss on the rocks grow. At this rate, Sakura almost willed the moldy substance to jump off its accustomed habitat and take up residence on the other jonin's face. Anything to spur a reaction from the man and she really did think that animated moss would do the job.

"I'm not giving up," she said at last and that was when Kakashi's tolerance failed him.

"I'm not giving in," he replied.

"Well, that leaves us at a stalemate, does it not?" she pointed out. The sarcasm wasn't lost on Kakashi who steadied her with a nonchalant look. Sakura halfway expected the man to bring up the classic cliché of how you shouldn't play with fire. Really, you didn't attend a bonfire because you feared the flames. You did it because you liked the flames.

"I would have thought you professional enough to save your games for when you're off duty," Kakashi said. He was playing dirty and Sakura wished that she had had a similar trick up her sleeve to counterattack his. As it was, she had nothing of the sort at her disposal, so she opted for the truth instead.

"That's a lousy trick."

"If the shoe fits."

"Don't pretend that this is a one-sided matter."

She thought she heard the older man sigh and it was a small victory.

"You know that I respect the three of you too much to give you what you're asking for," Kakashi said and his gaze swept across her face for the first time that day. It was almost as though he was searching for something that was supposed to be there, written on her face, only she wasn't aware of it herself.

"I'm not a snot-nosed kid who doesn't understand the word 'no'," she said and fixed the other jonin with a look that could cut through the hardest of glass. He was immune to it, naturally, but it put her own nerves at ease. And at the moment that was all she dared to strive for.

"I thought we were done with this discussion?"

"I believe we left off with you saying how you wanted to have sex with me."

"And you wish for me to elaborate on that?" he replied in a dull tone. The question was surreal and so very obviously meant to deter her from pursuing the topic, but Sakura was nothing if not persistent when she wanted her answers.

"No," she answered. "I wish for you to understand that I would have no objections if you should choose to pursue that particular desire."

By now, the uncensored visuals were very avidly poking at her insides, but her wish to solve the issue at hand overrode the embarrassment that should have painted her face a cherry red by now. Either that or she had accommodated to the older jonin's newly adopted crudeness towards her. It was a defense mechanism, she had figured out. Imagine that. The Copy Ninja, famous for his laid-back and overall carefree attitude, resorted to crudeness when he felt cornered. That revelation – and the laughs it was bound to produce once she passed on the bit of knowledge to Naruto and Sasuke – was just enough to keep Sakura from crawling into a hole in the ground and die.

"I'm not gonna have sex with you, Sakura."

Blunt and to the point. Effective.

She didn't know what struck her the most. The blatant rejection or the dismissive tone. She just recognized the feeling for being what it was. A negative emotion that settled deep in the back of her chest and one that she would have to dig forth and deal with later. For now, she had to stay focused. She could be hurt later. Now, she had an issue to solve.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I don't remember you being this persistent when I tried to teach you how to optimize your aim," Kakashi commented humorlessly. She gave him credit for not having chosen her pursuit of Sasuke as his example. Any lesser man would have done it.

"Kakashi-sen-"

"Don't," he interrupted her. She wasn't sure what he had referred to.

"You have to give me more than a no," she tried instead.

He shifted his weight from one foot to another and it was an awkward movement that was far too deliberate than what it should have been.

"Is this some sort of messed up admiration complex?"

"No," she snapped, partly offended that he would suggest so. "And don't belittle me."

"I'm doing nothing of the sort."

"And don't patronize me either."

Kakashi had been right. You didn't address personal issues while you were on duty. And this was the reason why. You got caught up in yourself and lost overview of the objective. Tsunade would have been disappointed.

"What do you want me to say, Sakura?" Kakashi asked. "You're a clever girl. You already know why you shouldn't be propositioning me like this."

She almost objected to the term 'girl', but chose to focus on a more important part of the sentence instead.

"You're a perverted old fart and my former teacher," she said. "Yes, I'm aware of that."

Although, why shouldn't she proposition him when he had been giving off a multitude of signs that told her to do exactly that?

"That's your perspective," he pointed out and for a moment she forgot that she was supposed to be irritated and sent him a confused look.

"And that differs from yours?"

He didn't reply at first and it was a clear sign that she had struck gold.

"You're eighteen now?"

"Nineteen in a month."

She didn't want to consider why she had felt the need to make herself sound older, because with the look that Kakashi was giving her, she really didn't need to think about it at all.

"Then it's about time to drop this romanticized idea of love, don't you think?"

She opened her mouth. Then closed it and opened it again.

"I'm talking about sex," she spoke up tentatively. "Screwing?"

It might have been her uncharacteristic use of foul language that made him look at her, but when he did look at her, all she could see was the challenge in his one-eyed gaze. She barely noticed how her legs were rooted to the spot by that very same eye as well. That was a pretty amazing feat, actually. Stupefying someone with one eye only.

"And you can separate those?" he asked tonelessly.

She didn't want to answer that.

"It's not fair," she said, her frustration escalating with her inability to lie. "Ever since Naruto was promoted, you've been sending me all these weird signals. Subtly, yes, and don't give me that look, because you know it's true. And now you're throwing it back in my face by asking me what Iwant, when youare the one who is bipolar. Kakashi, I don't know how to-"

"I suggest you save the rest for later," he cut her off, looking off to the side with a now vacant expression on his face. She followed his gaze where she caught sight of Naruto who was rapidly advancing on them amidst the murky green treetops. In that moment, she felt frighteningly indifferent to her comrade's approach and almost entertained the idea of continuing the discussion regardless of his presence. Thankfully, her professional self finally took charge and revived her composure until she had a steady hold of her priorities once again.

"Alright," the blond grinned enthusiastically when he plopped down from the sky with three bright, red cards safely tucked down the pockets of his pants.

"I knocked them out good. They're gonna be out for a couple of hours at least," he informed them. "Anyone who has ordered a bunch of fake identities?"

"It's too late to do it today," Kakashi noted. "Where did you store the bodies?"

"Cave in the forest," Naruto answered automatically. "What are you gonna do?"

"Move them someplace remote and knock them out better with my Sharingan."

"We gonna practice the transformation jutsu on them a couple of times?"

The shift from private to professional wouldn't come to her, so Sakura kept her mouth shut and followed orders for the rest of the night. After all, Kakashi had told her to save the rest for later and she certainly intended to. It was just unfortunate that all the hard work and progress she had just made was bound to have lost its effect by then.

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, she didn't hire her employees based on their looks alone; that was just a nice bonus whenever it happened. No self-respecting businessman or woman would dishonor their management skills by running a business based on such a fleeting foundation as 'beauty'. Beauty was a relative term and Tora was perfectly aware of that, which was why she hired her staff based primarily, if not solely, on competence. If they could convince her that they belonged in her business, then they were in. Her dancers should be able to choreographically dance their way across a stage, not writhe across the floorboards like amateurs. Incompetence was the killer. Incompetence drained the money out of a business. She would not have incompetence in her employees.

"So, you're saying," she began, looking at the pathetic excuse of a man that was sitting before her. "That the girl is the Hokage's apprentice? Haruno Sakura?"

"Mah chakra was fucked like hell an' she cleared it all up," Sasaki confirmed, no doubt believing that the piece of information was going to make his employer overlook his crappy job performance. He was sorely mistaken, of course, but he didn't need to know that yet. Competent employees didn't get captured by a fool like Imagawa. They escaped like their fellow comrades.

"And the other two?"

"A blond kid aroun' her age an' an older jonin with a freaky red eye."

"Red eye?" she asked, arching a delicately plucked eyebrow.

"He said it could help him see if ah lied," Sasaki quickly explained. Fukuda was standing behind the seated man, and as Tora removed her attention from the fidgeting man in the chair, she caught the displeased gaze of the man behind him. His face was a mirror of her own. She averted her eyes back to Sasaki in the chair.

"You're dismissed and off the payroll for two weeks," she told him unsympathetically. This one was smart enough not to make a fuss, but simply stood up from the chair and respectfully left the office. The minute that the door closed behind him, Fukuda spoke up.

"Sounds like Hatake."

"Indeed it does," Tora agreed, pinching the bridge of her nose as she processed the newly gathered information.

"Ya think Imagawa hired 'em?"

"I fail to see how else it could fit together, Hisashi," she said and sent her cousin an annoyed look.

"I dunno," he shrugged and pushed himself off the wall, moving closer to the desk she was sitting behind. "They could be 'ere for other purposes."

She knew what he was referring to and his doubt only irritated her furtherer.

"Officially, they don't have anything on me besides the raiding of Okada village and that's hardly enough to have Konoha authorities step in and charge me with illegal distribution of goods. That's out of their political range unless help is requested by Grass or Waterfall, and my spies would know if anything of that sort has been set into action. They're here for the idiot's jewelry. The Hokage is simply smart enough to put skilled people on the job," she concluded with an air of finality.

"If it is Hatake, we need to double security though," she added, looking at Fukuda pointedly.

"I'm on it," he nodded and turned towards the door, ready to make his departure.

"And Hisashi?"

He stopped and turned back towards her.

"Prohibit all use of my poisons unless I personally give clearance."

"Ya think she's got the skills to make antidotes?"

"I'm not taking the risk."

He gave her a blank look. "Ya might want not to sugarcoat it fer me."

"Get your ass moving and secure the premises, Hisashi," she ignored his comment and turned back to the paperwork scattered across her desk, effectively dismissing her cousin.

"Whatever. Don't come cryin' to me if it comes back an' bites ya in the ass, though," he replied and exited the office at a leisure pace that she wanted to beat out of him. This was why you shouldn't bring family – or lovers, for that sake – into your business. They thought they had the liberty to question you.

* * *

The hardest thing you could be set to do on a mission was waiting.

Tonight, at around seven o'clock, Sakura was gonna be Kashiwagi Sui. A blonde at the age of twenty-four with identification number 011B. As for right now, at three o'clock in the afternoon, she had a schedule that was as barren as her fridge at home.

"What do you think Sasuke is doing?" Naruto asked when they eventually came to a halt by a small stream and settled down in the cool grass. The two of them had been wandering about aimlessly in the forested area outside of the village for a good two hours by now, getting used to the unknown terrain and trying to pass the time while Kakashi predictably was nowhere to find. In fact, his current whereabouts were completely unknown. They were reconvening at six o'clock inside the inn, however, so she supposed that they didn't really need to know of his current whereabouts. She still would have welcomed some sort of coordinates though.

"No idea," she answered and tilted her head skywards. The sky was a peaceful, bleak grey. Something you normally associated with Snow Country and something that you rarely witnessed as a Konoha citizen. Marsh and Frost had the same skies, the climate made sure of that, but they were not nearly as peaceful as the grey sky of Snow.

"I kinda miss the bastard already."

"Tsunade-shishou has probably sent him out on a solo mission to blow off some steam," Sakura offered, because she didn't feel comfortable enough to openly admit that she missed the silently supportive presence of the self-conceited idiot as well.

"What do you think Kakashi-sensei is doing?"

"What's this?" she smiled. "You're getting homesick?"

"Bored. There's nothing to do around here when we have to keep a low profile," he said and picked at the grass to somehow illustrate just how bored he was.

"Captain's orders," she muttered.

"Kakashi-sensei should pull the stick out of his ass," Naruto objected and Sakura silently agreed, though her reasons for agreeing were definitely not the same as Naruto's.

"You've just become accustomed to the attention that comes with being idolized."

"Sakura-chan idolizes me?" he asked her, knowing very well that that wasn't what she had referred to.

"Everybody else idolozes you. Sasuke is gonna try out for the exams next year. He's gonna pass."

There was a brief pause in which Sakura studied the mountains in the distance.

"Sakura?"

"Mhm?"

"When was the last time you were on a date?"

The punch to her gut made her blurt out the first word that came to mind: "What?"

"When was the-" he started to repeat himself.

"No, I heard you. What kind of question is that?"

"You're just really uptight these days," he said and it wasn't difficult to read into the context of that answer. After all, Sakura was the friend of Ino. She knew exactly what sort of category that the adjective 'uptight' fell under when it was matched up with word 'date'.

"And when did you last have sex?" she asked and gave her blond friend a thoroughly stony look.

"Two weeks-"

"Don't answer that. And why is everything about sex these days? I thought that the older you got, the less important trivial things became."

There was a pause.

"He's gonna pass."

"Of course he is. He's Uchiha Sasuke. He'll pass and he'll do missions together with us," she replied and pushed herself up from the ground. "Come on. Let's head back."

"Hey, did you hear he got to second base with his girlfriend the night before we took off?"

"He has a girlfriend?"

"Eh, well, he denies it, but yeah."

They began heading back towards the village.

"Was it that Megumi girl you talked about?"

"Yup," Naruto confirmed with an uplifting tilt to his voice.

"I thought you were joking?"

"At the time I was," he explained, burying his hands in his pockets. They wore civilian clothes. Precaution was crucial.

A year ago, they would have been discussing weekly beheadings and compared their injuries to find out who was the toughest. Nowadays, they talked about relationships. Sometimes, Sakura wished that Sasuke would revive Orochimaru and resume the warpath that he had been on back then. Anything was better than having to justify exactly why she hadn't had sex in almost half a year.

"We should take up sparring again," she said suddenly. "If we're gonna be teamed up from now on, we should be more aware of each other."

"Hell yeah. We haven't done that since you started working with Tsunade-baachan."

She frowned guiltily. "That can't be right. I'm sure we've done it at some point since then."

He looked at her, smiling strangely. "You don't really realize how busy you are, do you?"

"Apparently not," she said, waiting for him to elaborate on such a statement.

"You work too much, Sakura-chan."

"I have to," she began automatically, "I need to pay-"

"-rent for two places," he finished for her with a knowing smile. She felt silent. Naruto had long ago ceased being an obnoxious, snotty brat. She knew that perhaps a bit too well. But it always caught her by surprise when he stepped out of his charismatically guileless persona. It caught her off guard when he acted his age and it unnerved her when he was serious. It unnerved her, because he was only this serious when he was being honest about something bad.

"Am I that awful?"

"You're not awful, Sakura. You're… what's the word… occupied," he reassured her and bumped his left shoulder into her right one. It stayed there. Firmly fixed in place. Occupied, busy. He could pick whatever adjective he wanted, but the point remained the same.

"It doesn't matter, though. You always focus one hundred percent on us when we spend time together."

"That doesn't really help, Naruto."

"I think it does.

Was she supposed to apologize?

"Sor-"

"Don't apologize," he cut her off, looking straight ahead as the village came into sight over the hilltop. So she wasn't supposed to apologize.

"Is it serious?"

"Hm?"

"Sasuke and that girl," she elaborated.

"Megumi," he corrected her. "And nah. His flavor has probably changed again when we get back home."

With Naruto Sakura ran on instinct. He was quite possibly the only person that she could spend time with without psychoanalyzing herself.

"Yeah."

"I don't think the bastard even knows himself what he wants," Naruto continued.

She frowned and unknowingly slowed her walk. What was it Kakashi had said? That she most likely knew what the three men wanted even if she wasn't aware of it? What a load of crap.

"Sakura-chan, you're falling behind. Come on!" Naruto called out to her. Shaking the unease off her shoulders, she hurried up next to him and offered him an apologetic smile.

"Hey, I got an idea!"

She almost bent over when he elbowed her in the ribs.

"Wanna race back to the inn?" he finished with a grin and she was about to point out that they were incognito at the moment and that it was the lamest idea ever. But then the Rasengan wielder had already taken off, and who would she be not to follow? Besides, if she didn't keep a close eye on her friends, they obviously ran ahead of her and found themselves second-base-girlfriends named Megumi.

* * *

**Edited March 5, 2013 **


	7. Chapter Six

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Six: **

Burlesque her ass, Sakura thought to herself when the three of them stepped inside the scrubby doors of Sakamoto's unofficial headquarters. They were all disguised in the skins of three Peach Parfait regulars. Kashiwagi Sui, Osamu Kato and Hayagawa Nobu. Kakashi had wanted them to memorize the names. He had specifically said so. And neither Sakura nor Naruto had felt any sort of disinclination towards the idea. Kakashi tended to forget that they knew how to do protocol. In all fairness, however, they often still did suck at following protocol in practice, so she supposed that he was excused for his paranoia on that account.

Surveying the dimly lit area and memorizing all exits, Sakura concluded that the place was a glorified strip joint at best. And perhaps that was even too much praise to give the centered stage with its six poles and adjoined bar. The atmosphere inside Peach Parfait had nothing to do with the tasty meat of the fruit. The air was heavy and stifling, like cotton, and Sakura half-choked on the first breath she took.

"Stay out of sight," Kakashi ordered. "And stay in contact. When you have located the position of the target, you give word. You do not act alone."

The last line was added for Naruto's benefit.

"Got it," a blonde Sakura nodded in the affirmative.

"Sure thing," Naruto chimed in rather informally.

They separated. Sakura went off in her search for the staff restrooms. They had decided this prior to entering the establishment. Unfortunately, Sakura found it incredibly hard to stay out of sight in the body that Naruto had plucked to be her vessel for the night. By the time that the fifth toothless hillbilly had grabbed her ass and thrown a sleazy comment her way, Sakura decided that it was not in the respectable sense that Kashiwagi Sui got around. Though she certainly did get around and this seemed to be her preferred hunting ground.

"Sui-chan!"

Huh?

"Sui-chan, over here!"

A petite black-haired woman was crossing the room. She advanced on Sakura with quick, dainty steps and judging by the scarcity of fabric on her body, the woman was one of Sakamoto's dancers. Marvelous, Sakura thought as she plastered a smile onto her face. She could only hope that this dancer didn't know Kashiwagi Sui too well or else her job had just become unfairly difficult.

"Sui-chan," the woman exclaimed for the third time. She reached Sakura and took a hold of her elbows, pulling her into a hug that Sakura fought not to pull away from. "It's about time you came here!"

"About time?"

"Yes!" the woman confirmed eagerly. "I'm going on stage in a few minutes with my new scene show. You promised to watch and give me feedback on it afterwards, remember?"

No?

"Yes. Of course."

The stranger eyed Sakura curiously. "Hon, are you okay?"

"I guess I had a bad night's sleep," Sakura said and gave a small shrug. "I didn't think it was this obvious."

"Ah," the woman smiled secretively. "Don't we all?"

Sakura had no idea what the smile meant, but she returned it anyhow.

"You're gonna love it," the woman then blabbered on in a fashion much like Naruto when he got overexcited about something. "Sakamoto-sama has allowed me to fire up the stage."

"Fire?"

"I'm gonna use it for my splits. Imagine how it's gonna shock the crowd-"

"Aiko!"

The woman, Aiko, blanched ever so slightly and looked over her shoulder in the direction that the voice had come from. Sakura followed her gaze and caught sight of no other than Fukuda Hisashi heading their way. In that moment, her face might have betrayed her. Where Aiko's face radiated unease, Sakura was halfway certain that her own face was radiating death. And that wouldn't do. So, with difficulty, she turned her head to the side and pretended to study the empty stage until she had her face back under control.

"Fukuda, sir," Aiko greeted the older man with her head respectfully lowered. Her body was as tight as a bowstring, and Sakura briefly wondered what sorts of reprimands Sakamoto's employees were faced with. And if those on the paper fit those in practice.

"Don't dawdle. Yer bein' paid for this," Fukuda said. He grabbed Aiko's arm in a grip that made her wince.

"Sorry, sir-"

"Get backstage an' get ready. I ain't got all day," Fukuda cut Aiko off mid-sentence and more or less flung her to the side. She very nearly stumbled over a chair in her heels until she regained her balance. She was off without any sort of goodbye to her friend Sui. Sakura didn't care, but Sui probably would have. It was funny how quickly mutual aversion could make you sympathize with a stranger. Sakura had no doubt that Aiko abhorred Fukuda. Hate walked hand in hand with fear. And it was very likely that Sui did as well. That made Sakura's job easier.

"Kashiwagi Sui, is it?"

"Indeed it is," Sakura smiled politely and made a mental note to wash her tongue with acid.

"I would prefer it if ya didn't keep my employees from doin' their job," Fukuda told her, looking her over in a fashion that didn't match his cold tone. Sakura kept the disgust off her face, amazingly enough, but she bet that it still showed through her body language when she straightened her spine and cleared her throat before she spoke next.

"I will try not to, sir."

"Don't try. Just do."

"Of course."

With a last look at her breasts rather than her face, Fukuda took off in the direction of the bar. Since it technically wasn't Sakura's breasts, she managed not to follow him and punch him in the face. She didn't move from her spot for a good few minutes. Eventually she felt someone come up behind her. Thankfully, she recognized the familiar presence of the person before she kicked the person in the groin. If she ever kicked Kakashi in the groin, it would be because he was an ass and not because she mistook him for a lecherous assaulter in a scruffy bar.

"Well done," Kakashi said as he came up next to her and slipped an arm around her middle. They had done that before. Acted for the sake of the mission. Sakura had also played this sort of act with Sasuke of all unimaginable persons. The two of them had pulled it off too if you didn't take into account the months of post-awkwardness. Though that time it hadn't been on a mission, but just during a regular night out. He had needed a way out of a date, and Sakura had been kind enough to provide it. Somehow, despite his past, Sasuke still managed to pick up an unfair amount of women. He was good eye-candy. He hadn't lost that. But Sakura would have thought that his desertion from Konoha ranks would have lessened his overall appeal. It hadn't.

"Of course. I love playing the cheap slut," she said. She adjusted his hold and put more distance between them. When she spoke next, she was still trying to decide why she had done that.

"He didn't sense the jutsu. I thought he was in her league, but he didn't give off any indicators that he knew I was an imposter."

"His strength as a professional equals hers. It's the basis that differs."

So, it was much like how the old Team Seven now equaled each other in strength, despite how they excelled in different areas. Sakura was a chakra specialist and a kickass medic, Naruto was an endless source of willpower and stamina and Sasuke was a doujutsu and genjutsu genius. If Sakamoto was a master with poisons and had enough brains to plan out distributions of illegal goods across land borders, then in what area did Fukuda excel? How could he possibly be Sakamoto's equal if he couldn't even detect a foreign ninja when the person was right up in his face?

"Think he's headed for her?"

"Possibly," Kakashi answered in Osamu Kato's voice. He kept his eyes fixed on Fukuda, who had reached the bar and was signaling for the barkeeper to let him in behind the bar. They both watched Fukuda's broad back disappear through the westward door behind the bar that read 'storage'.

"We can't go through that door," Sakura pointed out somewhat unnecessarily.

"Yes. They seemed to have doubled it."

"What?"

"Doubled the security. Fetch Naruto and be outside in five minutes. Exit separately."

He then let go of her waist and sauntered off to God knows where, leaving her the task of locating Naruto in a body she had forgotten what looked like. Sometimes Ino was right. Sakura's life sucked ass. At least now she knew that her and Kakashi's professional relationship was still in good shape despite the awkward stalemate that their private relationship was stuck in. That was one less excuse for him and a definite advantage for her. And she really wasn't below playing dirty when she knew that Kakashi played disgustingly filthy.

Exactly three minutes later, the three of them were positioned just outside the burlesque in a convenient spot where the brushwood of the forest met with the western wall of the building. Now that the masquerade had served its purpose, they were back in their own normal skin. Their focused needed to be elsewhere now.

"A window?" Naruto suggested from where he was crouching low in the bushes.

"The roof," Kakashi answered.

"The ventilation system," Sakura filled in upon noticing Naruto's blank expression. Although, she thought to herself, surely the ventilation system had to be out of order for the air to have been so bad inside.

"What's the mode of engagement?"

"Sasaki will have delivered his report by now. Discretion will have no effect. They know who we are and why we are here. Sasaki will have told them and they will have figured it out. He saw my Sharingan. And the amount of medics that can perform procedures on the level you openly displayed is scarce," Kakashi said in such a simple manner that Sakura was sure she had heard him wrong. No discretion meant that they would drop straight into combat and rely on the element of surprise. That was battle strategy you could understand.

"The doubled security," Sakura said suddenly. "They know we are here. That's why the security has been doubled. Like you said earlier."

Kakashi nodded and continued. "Sakamoto will have the jewelry in her possession-"

A couple of Sakamoto's henchmen chose that moment to walk by their hiding place and Kakashi waited until they had passed to finish his sentence. With Sakamoto knowing their identities, it meant that she knew of their capabilities and limitation. If it meant that Sakamoto would be less rash in her decisions to use her poisons, Sakura could live with that. It meant less medical work for her, which meant that the odds were in their favor. However, if the expert poisoner had fled her headquarters and had left Fukuda in charge, Sakura would hunt the bitch down. She had not gone through this professional and personal hell without getting her prize.

Make that prizes, she thought and shot Kakashi a look he didn't notice.

"Naruto," Kakashi addressed the other man. "Go."

And off they were. Captain's orders.

The ventilation system wasn't out of order, amazingly enough, and five minutes later the three Konoha ninjas plopped down onto the carpeted floor of the westward staff passageway of Peach Parfait. As expected, the corridor was patrolled by Sakamoto's henchmen. Naruto took down one guard with a neat kick to the face. He then sent him onwards to Sakura who smashed his face in, knocking him unconscious. Kakashi, who was in the rear, narrowly sidestepped the body that was hurled backwards from her punch. The body rolled a few rounds, skidding across the floor with limbs flapping wildly about, until it rested against the back wall with the neck quirked at an obscene angle.

Things came to a brief halt.

"He's down," Naruto said. His voice sounded faraway to Sakura's ears. She should have had eased up on the punch. She had felt his neck snap. That had not been her intention.

"Keep moving," Kakashi instructed.

Spilt milk was spilt milk, right?

Sakamoto's office wasn't that difficult to locate. Offices always lay at the end of corridors, really. Sakura kept it to herself that they probably would have found it faster if Kakashi hadn't put Naruto in the lead. Then again, Naruto was all about close combat and naturally that had played a part in Kakashi's reasoning. Sakura was all for fists as well, but as a medic her safety was of greater importance than the safety of the other team members. She had never liked that logic and had had a hard time adapting to it back when Tsunade had first introduced it to her. It was that logic which now placed Naruto in the front and Kakashi in the rear, and left her with the safe middle. How could she be okay with that?

The office door was unmanned. That in itself was a bad sign.

Naruto went through first, Sakura and Kakashi filling in behind him.

Almost immediately, the situation felt amiss.

"Well, what have we here?"

Sakamoto sat perched upon her desk, her legs delicately crossed by her ankles. Fukuda was standing beside her with a nasty grin contorting his face. Sakura recognized choreographed play when she saw it. The lack of security and muscle in the office reeked of choreographed play. It was staged. Staged was not good. Suddenly, Sakura didn't feel so very bad for having snapped the guard's neck in the corridor.

"Are you lost?" Sakamoto smiled. "Or are you here with a purpose?"

"A welcome committee. How thoughtful," Kakashi spoke up first, sounding vaguely amused, probably in an attempt to keep up the illusion of a friendly encounter. He knew that Sakura and Naruto would follow his lead.

"I'm nothing if not a good at what I do, Hatake-san," Sakamoto replied and ran her red-tipped nails through her curls. "So, what can I do for you lot? I'm afraid that my girls are all caught up in other affairs at the moment. Otherwise, I would have introduced them to you. They would be ecstatic to meet a great legend such as the Copy Ninja Hatake Kakashi."

Fukuda's leer was positively slithery and Sakura's skin was crawling off her bones.

Sakamoto pursed her lips. "I can make some of them lower their price, if that should be-"

"We're here to retrieve the belongings of Imagawa Kaito. Nothing more and nothing less," Sakura drowned out the rest of Sakamoto's sentence. She earned herself a sideways glance from Kakashi that she no doubt would get to experience head on later. She even received a confused look from Naruto. She hadn't followed their Captain's lead. In fact, she had cut his usual playtime short. Part of her was delighted. Another part, the part that respected Kakashi as an equal and a friend, was less so.

"A call would have sufficed," Sakamoto said, her eyes zeroing in on Sakura. Reflexively, Naruto stepped up next to her and Sakamoto's eyes narrowed in on him instead.

"Pretty," she sneered, all fake politeness gone.

"Hand over the jewelry or have us take it from you."

Fukuda took a step forward towards the group, but was stopped by Sakamoto's hand on his shoulder. Her grip reminded Sakura of a claw. Stealthy and secure. She would love to strip the woman off that control. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Sakura was shocked by the strength of her animosity towards the other woman. She couldn't pinpoint the roots of it. But for now, the hate added fuel her determination and so she welcomed it.

"None of those options really appeal to me," Sakamoto said. "What if I have sold it already? Did you consider that?"

"You haven't," Kakashi replied. Sakamoto seemed to evaluate Kakashi's surety on the matter. It was fun sight. No one could outstare Kakashi, but Sakamoto was fighting a tough battle to do so.

"You can have it," she then said and gave a bored flip of her hair. "It's of no use to me, anyway. Piece of junk. No value at all. Such a disappointment. Fake rubies, imagine that. I always knew Imagawa the bastard was a cheapskate. It was a gamble to even consider that he would be any different this time."

"This time?" Sakura asked before she could swallow back the words.

"Yes," Sakamoto confirmed with an uninterested look in Sakura's direction. "This time."

Clearly, she saw them as no threat to her business empire and unfortunately, she could safely do so. Hired by Imagawa and not the administration of either Grass or Waterfall, their authority didn't stretch that far. Grass and Waterfall had given them permission to cross their borders in order to retrieve the jewelry, but they hadn't Konoha permission to take down Sakamoto. Even though they were currently sharing the same air as the woman, they couldn't fight her. Not unless she charged at them. And Sakamoto clearly knew that. They couldn't even imprison her on grounds of theft, because they were only hired to retrieve the jewelry and this wasn't Konoha jurisdiction where they could override mission objectives if the situation called for it. Sakamoto was safe if she gave up the jewelry. Her business empire was safe if she just gave up the jewelry. It was a minor fall back in Sakamoto's overall plan. Whatever that plan now was. Sakura felt like crying. Not from anger, but from desperation. She hated politics. Politics restrained you.

"The jewelry," Kakashi pointed out patiently.

"Ease up there. One might think you're getting excited."

"The jewelry," he repeated and Sakamoto rolled her eyes.

"Yes, yes. I hear you, big boy."

Fukuda moved back to his former spot by the desk and Sakamoto let go of his shoulder. She slid off the desk. By some miracle her dress stayed in place. She then opened a drawer and pulled forth a black velvet pouch. With a delicate flick of her wrist, she threw the pouch at them. Naruto grabbed it midair. The situation was as off as it could be. And none of the three Konoha ninjas made any move to retreat, even now that they had gotten the jewelry. Sakura personally didn't want to move. The same counted for Naruto. She didn't know about Kakashi. She never knew about him.

"What?" Sakamoto asked with her eyebrows raised. "It's all in there. Check it, kid."

Naruto did as she asked, but not because she asked it.

"It's there," he confirmed, his brows furrowed as he didn't know what to make of the situation. Sakura really was on the same page as him.

"Mission accomplished," Sakamoto commented with a small smirk.

"Them idiots seem ta doubt ya," Fukuda said, speaking for the first time since they had entered the office. Suddenly, he seemed much less imposing. That was what stoic silence and strategically placed leers could do.

"Speak nicely of our guests, Hisashi. Their doubt is justified," Sakamoto chided him and sent the three of them a beguiling smile. "If there is nothing more you need of me, I will have to ask you to leave. I'm driving a business here and I need to brief my staff about tomorrow's schedule. Given that you entered by yourself, I trust it that you can find the exit by yourself as well."

* * *

When they returned to the inn with the velvet pouch in their possession, they packed their stuff and headed for the road.

No discussion. No request for food or sleep. It had been voiceless communication at its best.

Now, a few hours well past sundown, they had settled down near the border of Konoha after having sped across the forested terrain of Grass with only a few breaks in between the hours of steadfast traveling.

"So," Naruto began as he sat down in the grass beside Sakura, both of them rubbing the sore muscles of their legs. "Just why are we fleeing like hell is on our heels?"

"She set Fukuda to trail us," Kakashi answered from where he was leaning up against a tree trunk. He was observing their surroundings, no doubt looking for oddities that would make their campsite unfit for camping. From Sakura's point of view, the space was neither too open nor too constricted. Even with Fukuda supposedly tailing them, Kakashi ought to be satisfied with their chosen settlement. At any rate, he wasn't going to make them take more ground that day. Not now when their bodies had been granted a break long enough for their muscles to start feeling the stress that they had been under for the past many hours. It wasn't when you kept going that you felt the strain. It was when you stopped.

"She didn't want to fight out the battle for the jewelry in the heart of her business where it would do most damage. By giving us the jewelry and then sending Fukuda after it, she's moved the fight to an area where it won't hurt her reputation and make her business lose profit," Sakura told Naruto, essentially explaining Kakashi's theory when the man himself didn't do it. Truthfully, Sakura had figured out the motive behind Sakamoto's actions during the past two hours of speeding across rivers and hills. She had been slow, too, though not as slow as Naruto. Naruto just didn't think that much ahead. He wasn't stupid, but he lived in the present. It was only during actual battles that he was an expert at thinking ahead and gaining the upper hand. Outside of the actual battle ground, his mind preferred to wander off. Sakura suspected that it was a side effect of his desirability. Enemies always sought him out. He didn't have to seek them out himself. So, therefore, he simply had to wait for the enemy to appear and then he would engage in battle and show his superiority on that front. It had been like that all his life. You couldn't fault him for it.

"Tracking. That's Fukuda's forte, right?" Sakura asked suddenly.

"Strategy would be more precise," Kakashi corrected her.

"He's a strategist? And you knew this from the start?" she asked Kakashi, her voice taking on an accusatory tone.

"It was never vital for the accomplishment of the mission," the older jonin expertly evaded her question.

"The accomplishment of the mission," she repeated and stood up from the ground. "And I suppose that as Captain you can withhold information from team members inconsequently?"

He seemed to hesitate, but that might have been because he was simply bored with the topic.

"Damn it, Kakashi!"

The man's face blanked as though she had thrown a kunai at his face. Hell, Naruto's face blanked, though that blankness was caused by surprise. As for Sakura herself, her face might have lost its majority of color in the aftermath of her impromptu outburst, but she didn't intend to stick around long enough to find out.

"I'm taking first watch," she brushed off whatever Naruto or Kakashi could have said. With a concentrated burst of chakra, she hauled herself up into the nearest tree. Outpost or sanctuary. It sounded the same to her.

* * *

It was two hours later that he joined her. He sat down next to her where she was sitting on the branch, dangling one leg back and forth and resting her chin on the bent knee of the other.

Naruto's snoring from below flittered through the leaves that were camouflaging her and it was one of the factors which let her know that Kakashi was the intruder. If Fukuda was near and it was on her watch, then Naruto wouldn't be asleep.

"Go look for an apology elsewhere."

"You're in an awful mood."

She threw him a dirty look, which was completely ineffective given that the man wasn't even looking in her direction. He was surveying the ground below. It was for the better. Her eyes would have melted the flesh off his face, lousy mask included. In her awful mood, that would have been a sight to revel in.

"I thought you would appreciate a lighter topic than the one I should be bringing up right about now," he said and shifted his attention onto her, leveling her with an iron coated gaze that she immediately turned away from.

"So, now you're in a talkative mood," she muttered a bit petulantly and refused to look at him. It might have been childish. She knew it was childish. But it was her only defense up there amidst the green leaves and cool air. Up there, she suddenly realized the advantage of being the one to seek out the other in a conflict. If you were the one who sought out the conflict, you were the one with the liberty to call the shots. This time, as opposed to all the previous ones, she had no such liberty. Kakashi was seeking out the conversation and he had control over it. She now understood how cornered Kakashi had to have felt those times where she had approached him.

"I take that as a yes."

She didn't answer him. She didn't think she had to.

"I wanted recognition from those that mattered. I wanted you there," she said, for some reason referring back to her jonin inauguration. "What I got was strangers who emphasized what a delight it would be to work with me in the future. It felt more like a job interview than a promotion."

"Safety measures."

By reflex Sakura turned her head to look at him.

"Safety measures?"

He nodded and it was a small and barely noticeable movement of his head. "They seize you up to see if their job is on the line."

"The big bad wolves want to scare off the flock of sheep?"

His eye crinkled by the corner and the fact that he was smiling shouldn't have eased up the pressure on her chest as much as it did.

"Careful. Your face might crack."

"I don't know if it should bother me that you three can tell my mood by looking at one-quarter of my face."

"Then take the mask off. I've seen you without at the hospital."

A short break in the conversation followed. Sakura pulled her leg up from midair and gathered both her legs to her chest with her arms. She was preparing herself for what she was about to bring up. Only she didn't know. The move had been instinctual.

"We didn't see much of you from that point onwards. After my inauguration, I mean," she said when the sentence felt too short.

"I showed up when you turned eighteen."

"Because Genma drank his ass off and chose to commandeer my bed with me in it," she said and sent her former teacher an odd look. "You were the only one we were sure he wouldn't main when you moved him."

"I was protecting your virtue."

"A bit counterproductive now, don't you think?"

It had slipped past her lips before she had realized what she was saying. Although this time, Kakashi really had been the one to steer the topic down that road. Not her. She had simply followed his lead. And they had just had an actual normal conversation for the first time in weeks and she went and made it all awkward and messy again.

"Sorry. That wasn't-"

"It looks like it."

"What?"

The question hovered in the air between them.

"It looks like it," Kakashi repeated eventually. He didn't elaborate. Sakura recognized a way out when she was handed one.

"Is this something-," she stopped mid-sentence when her right foot slipped off the branch. She regained her balance and finished. Unfortunately, her voice didn't come out quite as confident as earlier. She had seen the twitch in Kakashi arm when her foot had skidded across the tree crust. "Is this something we're taking home with us?"

For a long moment he said nothing. Sakura was convinced he was going to drop the topic. He was just thinking of the least painful way to do it. The way that didn't include her smacking him off the branch.

"People always seem to blame others instead of themselves, do they not?"

"I'm not up for the big philosophy lesson right now," she brushed him off, less inclined to keep up the conversation now that the topic had drifted off towards 'insignificant'.

"Humanity," he corrected her. "Not philosophy."

She rolled her eyes. "Is this the shift to second watch? That's why you're here, right?"

"It was the shift half an hour ago."

"Funny how that doesn't surprise me," she said and got to her feet, preparing to take off towards the ground.

"You can't bring something home that's already there."

He had said it so nonchalantly that she should have just taken it for one of his usual cryptic comments. One of those comments that you didn't really listen to. As it was, she processed the words solely because she had chosen that moment to step past him in order to descend the tree. His words stopped her before she could do the latter though, which situated her in a standing position directly in front of the crouching man. He could have been humming a tune and she would have heard it instantly. The space between them was that compact.

She cleared her throat. "I wasn't aware it was already-"

"You're more than aware, Sakura," he interrupted her amusedly.

"You know, your change in attitude is worse than Sasuke on a bad day."

He stood up then, forcing Sakura to back up slightly so she wasn't trampled off the branch. In the back of her mind, she didn't like how neither of them weren't really doing what they in fact should be doing; keeping watch. Of course, she could only speak for herself. Still, Kakashi didn't look like much of his attention was on the mission.

"Is that so?" he said, looking over her shoulder and past her.

"Growing deaf on your old days, are you?"

His response was a noncommittal shrug and with a shake of her head, Sakura left the second watch in his hands.

* * *

**Edited March 6, 2013 **


	8. Chapter Seven

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**C****hapter Seven:**

The sun was still hours away from rising beyond the treetops of Fire Country when Fukuda and his team of misfits caught up with the smaller three-man group. That is, the bastard decided to finally announce his presence, as if the three Konoha ninjas hadn't already been aware of him lurking around in their shadows ever since they had taken off from camp two hours ago. Right as the clock had struck midnight. There had been no discussion among the group.

Sakura was in mid-jump from one branch to another when she felt the change in the air from below.

"Regroup," was Kakashi's immediate order.

She had changed direction, heading towards the ground, before Kakashi had even spoken. She hit the ground, stones and pebbles crunching beneath her feet as she crouched low in a halfway spin, and narrowly dodged the fist that was thrown her way by the burly man on her tail.

"Don't ya think yer gonna escape me, bitch!"

She scoffed inwardly. What was it about big, buff men and the derogatory 'bitch'? Clearly, they were overcompensating for something and it couldn't be their ego. That was big enough.

"I'm not gonna," she said under her breath and sidestepped a badly aimed kick, punching the guy square in the jaw. He went down for only a second. Kind of impressive, really, considering that the hit had been partially chakra-infused. That second, however, was enough for Sakura to get an overview of the situation. Naruto was fighting two guys up above in the treetops and Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Fukuda. She was suddenly very intent on kicking this guy's ass and go locate Fukuda. So intent, in fact, that she didn't sense the katana style sword that was thrown her way, before it cut through the soft flesh of her upper shoulder. A hissing sound escaped her, and her eyes were back on her opponent. She stood her ground. You didn't give up ground. In the back of her mind, she briefly thought that Tsunade would say the nick to her shoulder was a deserved one. She herself knew she had deserved it.

"Gotta pay attention, beautiful," the man leered disgustingly. She sent him a sneer and leapt backwards to grab the sword where it was embedded in the ground. She hurled it back at him. He had anticipated the move and the handle mid-air. Sakura didn't do weapons. She did fists. That was her excuse.

"Sorry," she answered wryly. "You're not that good-looking."

As expected, the implication didn't go overly well with the brute.

With his sword forgotten, he lunged at her, and it served as the perfect opportunity for her to jump onto her hands in a backwards swing and plant her foot directly underneath his jaw. She heard the crunch when his jaw dislocated, and she gave herself a few seconds to search for Naruto. He was down to one man. No visible injuries. Good.

Her own opponent was clutching his jaw, glaring at her from a distance and she fought not to smirk. One thing was good about the big, buff men who used the derogatory 'bitch', she thought. They generally underestimated women.

She took another brief moment to analyze her shoulder wound. 'Nick' might have been a little too nice for a wound that was bleeding this much. Her sleeve was soaked, dripping with the redness that she no longer really associated with pain. Tsunade would tell her this was the moment where she healed herself, because 'if the medic dies, who else is there to keep the rest of the team from dying'.

Well, she thought and averted her attention back to her opponent. Tsunade wasn't there. Sometimes you had to make your own rules.

"Losing it, big guy?" she called out to Sakamoto's minion, the taunt thick in her voice. Oh yeah, she was baiting the oaf. She worked best on defense. She wanted him to charge at her.

"Bt'chn," he attempted to curse at her, but his broken jaw made it difficult.

When they collided the third time, he got her directly on her wounded left shoulder. Understandably, she lost the upper hand. The bastard's grip was tight and squishy soft where his fingers dug into the cleaved flesh, and Sakura felt a vague need to vomit. Probably a psychological thing. He hurled her onto the ground then, deliberately putting pressure on her wound and the pain made her see black for a couple of seconds. Then she was face-up on the ground and he was above her. Wounded shoulder or not, she had enough sense to deliver a blow to his chin that knocked him off her.

She got up and her shoulder was throbbing alarmingly when the buffoon lunged for the fourth time. She made the decision to deliver an attempt at a final blow to his head. He got her in the gut upon impact, and she went for plan B. She swept him off his feet with a ground level kick. And then she knocked his fucking teeth in.

He went down hard and she could feel his teeth break beneath her hand.

"He's down?"

She turned around to look at Naruto and nodded, doing a quick survey of his body. Still no injuries.

"Your shoulder," he said, but now was not the time.

"Kakashi?" she asked instead. The breathlessness of her voice surprised her.

"Fukuda," Naruto confirmed. He was struggling with his breath as well, though in a different manner that didn't indicate simple exhaustion. The medic in her was immediately on alert.

"Sucker got me in the neck," he grumbled upon noticing the look she was sending him.

"Kakashi's direction?" she asked. She decided that unless Naruto was lying on the ground with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, he could live through whatever pains he might be having. The same counting for her, of course. Speed was essential.

"Ea-" Naruto started to say, but was cut off by the sound of splintering wood to their right. The two Konoha jonin had just enough time to move out of the way, before they collided head on with the one-on-one fight of Kakashi and Fukuda. Naturally, Naruto took one look at the situation and then plunged straight into the fight, disrupting the balance and putting the odds in their favor. Sakura stayed back, examining Kakashi's movements and immediately concluding that they were off. It became even more apparent when he moved to the back of the fight, and let Naruto take the front and thus the brunt of Fukuda's attacks.

She spared Fukuda a brief look. Against Kakashi, he had been down to his last minute. Against Naruto, he was now down to his last seconds. Sakamoto was gonna be disappointed in her favorite henchman.

Up there, from her observation post on a branch of a random maple tree with Naruto handling matters and Kakashi playing backup, Sakura allowed herself space to think outside of the fight.

The whole thing was absurd to her. A fight over something as stupid as jewelry. She touched her breast pocket where the heirloom was safely resting. This was the kind of thing she and Hinata would have a laugh about whenever Ino spent an entire mission salary on shoes, because the sequins were so 'sequiny'. Needless to say, Sakura wasn't big on possessions. Heirloom or not, she could make stone into diamond with a punch of her fist. If people wanted wealth they could just go tear out a rib and claim it to be of ivory. Bam. Instant wealth. Sakura was naïve. She would buy it. Besides, lies paved a prettier road than the guts of killed men. A business strategy that had flown right past Sakamoto's nose, it would seem.

She was brought back to the situation at hand, when Fukuda's body was flung up against the trunk of the tree she was sitting it. It made a sickening thud and she raised an eyebrow.

"Man down," Naruto called up to her with a grimace of a grin. She jumped down onto the ground. Kakashi's posture was much more slouched than what she liked it to be. It wasn't anything big, and she most likely only noticed it because she had been trained to look for it. Naruto seemed oblivious to it.

"Where?" she asked the older jonin.

"Ribs," Kakashi answered. "Both sides. And my left knee, I think."

"Tai-jutsu?"

His answer was a nod.

Kakashi had gone for close combat. Funny, how all three of them had opted for the same style. She felt like pointing out the stupidity of him going for the combat style where he was weakest. Then she reminded herself that Fukuda probably hadn't given him much choice in the matter. Kakashi would never willingly go for close combat. He worked best with distance and he would be on his best against Fukuda. She was mildly curious as to how Fukuda had gotten both sides of his ribs though. Kakashi only ever left one flank open, if any at all. Maybe she would ask later.

"Sit down," she ordered and let Naruto take care of the body of Fukuda. She didn't know if the man was unconscious or dead, and she quite frankly didn't give a shit. She had just gotten Kakashi down onto the ground when Naruto's voice stopped her.

"You can't heal him until you've healed yourself," he reminded her from where he was crouched down next to Fukuda. He was studying the slow swelling process of the man's beaten up face.

"Valid point," Kakashi agreed, his eye going to her shoulder. She hadn't even noticed that her injured arm had gone halfway numb until Naruto had pointed it out. Now, she didn't feel like doing anything about it, because Kakashi's survey of her injury had been absolutely indifferent. Valid point. She felt dirty.

"It's my left arm. I work with my right," she said and knelt down next to Kakashi. He was watching her. She pretended not to notice that Naruto was watching her too. She knew they both had seen straight through that one.

"Sakura," Kakashi addressed her in that somber tone he used whenever he thought she was being stupid.

"What?" she muttered and continued to tug at his vest. It didn't budge an inch. He didn't stop her, but he didn't encourage her either. It went on for a good minute. She eventually admitted to herself that she wasn't getting anywhere with trying to slip the vest off Kakashi's non-cooperating body. Especially not with only one functioning arm available for the task. She was glad that Naruto had busied himself with piling together the bodies of Sakamoto's employees.

"Sakura," Kakashi said again. She expected to see a reproachful look on his face. The one that told her how badly she had failed. But when she looked up into the man's face and got a contemplative look instead, the pain in her shoulder subsided as her mind focused on the man in front of her.

"What?" she asked. This time, however, the question was loaded with something else that she didn't dare question. Not before she was back home in her apartment, cocooned in the freshly cleaned sheets with pink and off-white blossoms that her mother had given her for her last birthday.

"You need to heal yourself."

She stared at him. She stared at him because she didn't know what else to do.

"Sakura."

He always used her name in these situations because he knew it worked.

"You really should heal yourself."

That triggered more of a response, and she figured that this was the closest she would get to an 'I care'. She went to work on herself, albeit somewhat jerkily, and with minor horror she discovered the actual amount of damage that had been done. Her shoulder was severed in half. The sight was quite alarming, really. Two chunks of flesh were separated by a gap that was as wide as her hand. The lack of severe pain was a result of the numbness that the injury had invoked. Tsunade would be so disappointed.

As she healed her wound, journeying inside herself like she always did during any healing process, she could feel Kakashi's eyes on her face. She congratulated herself for remaining focused on the task.

Half an hour later, she was about eighty percent done. She decided that it was enough. That alone was a testament to how severe the injury had been, and she prayed that the boys didn't reach that same conclusion, because that would just be humiliating. Anyhow, it was all about equal distribution and so, when she was eighty percent done, she lowered her left hand from her shoulder and looked at Kakashi. He was her next patient in line.

He was still studying her. Or perhaps study was too potent a word.

No, her mind corrected her. It really wasn't.

"You have it still?" he asked her, his voice bordering on an emotion she couldn't decipher.

"Yes," she answered, her own voice matching that of his. She didn't need to touch her pocket to know that the necklace and earrings were still there.

"Good. We wouldn't want all this effort to be in vain, would we?"

She shook her head even though her mind very clearly processed his question as rhetorical.

"Good," he said again, sounding contemplative more than anything else. Right there, something passed between them that Sakura wasn't entirely sure how to define. And she wasn't sure it would help if she did manage to define it. In that moment, and with some surprise, she realized that she had finally accepted that Kakashi was a phenomenon that worked on the subconscious level. He grew on you. Like fungus. You couldn't fight it off, but you could never really grow to like it either.

"Your shoulder's healed?"

Naruto's voice made her flinch. She hadn't heard him come up behind her. Though, to be honest, you couldn't heal effectively and pay attention to your surroundings at the same time. She had opted for healing effectively, and thus counting on Naruto to take out any possible threats.

"It's enough for now," she told her blond friend, and moved to slip off Kakashi's vest. This time, he helped the best he could. She had to give him credit for that, as she would later discover that he had broken a good portion of his ribs. If Fukuda had aimed just a little lower, there would have been a risk of one of those ribs puncturing a lung. She kept that tidbit of information to herself, of course. At least nobody had been poisoned on this trip, as it had been Tsunade's biggest fear. Guess the rumor mill came in handy when you had 'medical prodigy' listed beneath your name.

However, sitting there on the mossy ground with a man whose torso had very nearly been slapped flatter than Tenten after a diet, Sakura felt nothing like Tsunade's haloed prodigy.

"He's out?"

Kakashi's question was directed towards Naruto, and Sakura listened with half an ear only. Instead, she found herself wondering if Kakashi really had been honest when he said that they already had brought it home with them. That it was already there.

* * *

Two hours later, with the sun peeking above the horizon, the three jonin stepped past the Konoha gates, looking like they had rolled around in mud and skated down a hill of bodily waste. Sakura's entire left side was soaked in blood that she hadn't bothered to stop and wash out. Naruto was walking with a limp to his right leg, and Kakashi's ribs were bandaged in one of Sakura's pink spare shirts. Needless to say, the sweet smell of grilled fish and deep-fried vegetables that greeted the trio upon their entrance through the gates was a welcome feeling of home.

And Sakura very nearly flopped down onto the ground and began bawling her eyes out.

"Makes you appreciate returning home, does it not?" Kakashi commented conversationally. Now that they had returned home safe and sound, the mood of the group had lightened considerably. Yet Sakura took great effort in placing Naruto in between her and Kakashi as the three of them headed towards the Hokage Tower. Fate was not to be trusted.

"Hell yeah," Naruto agreed, his attention going up and down the street, quite possibly in search for Sasuke. Sakura felt a little guilty then. She had barely spared Sasuke a single thought in the past days.

"He's practicing," Sakura reminded Naruto. Sasuke took great pride in his ambitious daily schedule. He got up at five in the morning to train his ass to shreds. Sakura didn't sleep until three o'clock like certain blond others, but five in the morning was just painful. She could do it if was a hospital shift, but actual training was just too hard to do that early.

"Right," Naruto remembered. He was obviously put down by the fact that they wouldn't accidentally stumble upon their friend on their trip to the Hokage's office. Separating Naruto and Sasuke was a little like separating toddlers.

"Hey! You three!"

Sakura and Naruto turned their heads. Kakashi's turn of his head was more a jerk than an actual 180 degree turn.

"Kiba!" Naruto greeted the other man who was coming towards them. Akamaru was nowhere in sight. Sakura tried not to frown. It was odd to see Kiba without the company of his furry friend. Besides, she liked Akamaru. The dog had always been on her side when she and Kiba had fought. Blessed little thing, it had been. Nowadays, 'little' didn't do the gigantic dog justice.

"Man, it's good you're back. Sasuke's been a right pain in the ass since you left," Kiba broke the ice quite inelegantly. He reached the group in a jog.

"Oh, yeah?" Naruto asked with a smirk already forming on his face.

"He hasn't been assigned a solo mission while we were gone?" Sakura cut in and ignored how Kiba eyed her bloodied clothes. Months of housebreaking, and he knew better than to the address the matter. She wondered if Kakashi could become like that. Then she quickly banished the thought.

"Well, he was assigned one. Pretty awesome one, actually," Kiba shrugged. "He refused to take it, though. Lee got it instead. Guess wonder boy wanted to mope around some more."

Well, that was a given.

"So, you're on your way to the Tower?"

Naruto and Sakura nodded affirmatively.

"Can you drop this off for me? It's some mandatory formula, I don't know."

Sakura took the halfway crumbled paper that Kiba dug forth from his back pocket. The logo at the bottom immediately claimed her attention.

"Your checkup was in February, and you haven't handed this in yet?" she pointed out surly. This was her area and thus her responsibility, after all.

"I've been out of town," he defended himself with a sheepish shrug. She figured it was pointless to tell him that without having handed in his medical checkup, there was no way in hell he could have been assigned any sort of mission, much less one out of town. Standing there in front of her old lover, Sakura was reminded of the many other discussions that she and Kiba had had in the past. She had always come out as the bitch. As she thought of this, she suppressed the urge to shoot a look in Kakashi's direction. Did she come off as a bitch to all men in her social circle?

Roughly fifteen minutes later, Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi were all situated within the Hokage's office. They were answering to the woman who guarded their pay checks like were they fragments of her soul. It was pure luck that Tsunade hadn't gone to sleep the previous night. Otherwise, they would have had to come back later since she wouldn't have been in. And everybody knew that once you stepped a foot inside your home, the first three post-mission days would be spent solely in your bed. Obligations or no obligations.

"Congratulations on a job well done," Tsunade congratulated the three jonin with a satisfied nod. Sakura felt a funny sort of need to ask just what her mentor was congratulating them for. She herself had returned with more trouble than what she had taken off with.

"The money has been transferred to your accounts and everything should be in order. And as it is protocol, you'll have the next two weeks off. Although, Sakura, you'll report to the hospital Tuesday next week," her mentor told her apologetically. "We're on a shortage of medics right now, and some of the new ones are horribly lacking in the effort department. I hate it when they pass slackers. Anyhow, I count on you to rectify that, starting next week."

Sakura just nodded. After a week of lazing around, she would be fed up with Ino, anyway. Most of her friends were good in small doses. Make it one big, great dose and you would lie comatose for a year. Kakashi himself thought that he was good in small doses, but with him it was really the other way around.

"And I expect your individual reports on my desk first thing tomorrow. First thing," the blonde woman stressed with a very pointed look in Kakashi's direction. He, of course, seemed oblivious to it.

"Naruto, Sakura, you're free to leave."

Expectedly Naruto was the one who actually voiced his confusion. Sakura kept it to herself.

"But what about-" he began and was immediately run over by Tsunade.

"Kakashi stays. I have matters to discuss with him in private. And Sakura, do go home and clean yourself up," the Hokage added with a slight scowl directed towards her apprentice. "That is just the way to attract diseases. You know better."

"Sorry, shishou," Sakura apologized, playing the card of remorse, but not necessarily feeling it.

There was an awkward pause.

"Well, off with you two. Don't just stand there and grow roots, I need that floor for other purposes."

Home sweet home, Sakura thought bitterly when she and Naruto exited the office with their tails firmly locked between their legs.

* * *

It was much later – when Sakura was scrubbing away all the caked blood to prod at her freshly healed wound and was listening to Ino's mouth running loose outside the shower curtain – that the tension and hurt from the past days got to her. And it got to her bad.

"Sakura, are you alright?" Ino's voice wafted through the flimsy blue material of the curtain, and Sakura would have loved to deny it, but some lies were just too obvious to bother with. And yet some lies you just had to stick with in order to save face. Like this one.

"Yes," she said, hating that her voice caught on the words, and how the lie made her eyes burn. Angrily, she put her palms flat against the wall and splayed out her fingers, watching the contrast of her pinkish skin and the grey tiles through the water that ran over her face. Of course it had been there from the start. They hadn't brought it home with them, because it had already been home. To think anything else would be to delude herself. And Sakura always made a strong point out of never doing that. However, it would seem that home was where the heart was, and not where you had your address listed. Home had been out on the battle field just as home was her apartment. Home was her heart. And matters of the heart were a bitch. They didn't care to be locked down. They wanted out and they would claw their way to it.

"Is this something we should talk about?" Ino tried again, and the concerned tone made Sakura clench her fists against the grey tiles. In these situations, Ino was a better mother than Sakura's mother herself.

"No," she answered. Despite her current inner turmoil, Sakura still picked up on the sound it made when Ino stood up from her seat on the toilet and crossed the frilly black carpet on the floor.

"I think I like him, Ino."

The sound of Ino's steps died out. Centimeters from the curtain that separated the two women.

"Like who?" Ino's voice was careful and measured when she spoke, and Sakura knew that she had just signed her own death certificate. Not because she had spilled the beans to Ino, but more so because she had just realized the extent of the beans. The weight of the realization was so heavy that her hands slid off the wall.

"Kakashi. I like him."

There was a moment of silence and the curtain was ripped aside. Sakura was too used to the invasion of her privacy to put up much of a fuss about it. Besides, with Ino staring at her like she had committed a mortal sin, there wasn't much room for her to be embarrassed about her nakedness. Let alone room for her to be sad about the revelation. She was much too intimidated by her friend's aggressive attitude to feel anything but the want to merge with the wall behind her.

"Handing your heart to him is like handing a wolf a beef of virgin meat, Sakura."

"No one talked about hearts," Sakura argued weakly, blinking excess water off her eyelashes. The water felt cold, like a second layer of skin, and the wall was welcome to engulf her any moment now.

"Then we might as well do it now. Because from the look of this, you're seconds away from a broken one."

"It's not…" Sakura paused, struggling to find the words. "It's not-"

"It's not him, but the mission," Ino finished for her, doing a bad imitation of Sakura that made Sakura wince inwardly. Because it was so very true.

"You want me to sugarcoat it, Sakura," Ino continued matter-of-factly. "You know I don't do that. That's why you haven't told me before now. Really, no prince is gonna sweep you off your neat little size six feet, much less the retarded bastard you've set your sight on. And you know I'm being realistic. I mean the guy is as frigid as an ice cone and as messed up as Sasuke. But if you absolutely want to pursue this, I have one question for you. When did we ever get something without working our asses off for it?"

"Never," Sakura relented with some reluctance.

"Exactly," Ino confirmed authoritatively. "So why should this be any different?"

"It's Kakashi," Sakura managed to snap despite her downcast state.

"And I say it again, why should it be any different?" Ino repeated in a dull tone. "I absolutely can't follow you on the emotional level of this one, God knows I can't, but you already know I would do the man in a heartbeat. He's attractive, I'll give you that. Also, you're both adults on the paper, so you can do whatever you wanna do – including sex, yes, so don't give me that look – and people can do shit about it. But you still have to work for it. And people will probably have issues with it. We all know that we're prejudiced as hell within our own community."

Sakura knew there was a reason that she liked the hypocritical food-hogging bitch. Ino was surprisingly broadminded when it mattered. You always had the odd couple of people from whom you shaped and defined yourself.

"So," Ino began secretively, as she let go of the curtain and sauntered back to her spot by the sink. "Wanna hear the juiciest news about Megumi and Sasuke?"

"They've gone public now?" Sakura asked and surprised herself by soaping up her hair as though they had been talking about Sasuke and his girlfriend for the whole time that she had been in the shower.

"Ah, well, to everyone else but themselves they have," Ino answered and Sakura could hear her open the cabinet above the sink and start rummaging around in search for something.

"How does that even work?" she asked skeptically from within the shower. Her spirit was returning to her as a result of the topic Ino had chosen. Which was probably quite deliberate, now that Sakura thought about it.

"You'd be surprised at how well it works," Ino commented as she slammed the cabinet shut. And thus began her great tale of Sasuke the Courageous and Megumi the Fairest. Sakura didn't listen. Her mind was otherwise occupied, and she suspected that Ino already knew.

The liquor was brought out half an hour later. It was tradition. To get absurdly drunk together after a completed mission. Although, they knew it had as much to do with tradition as it had to do with the shit that life threw at them in general.

"So, ah, he said what?" Ino asked from where she was sprawled out across the living room floor. She handed Sakura the half-empty bottle of alcohol, and Sakura took a swig of it before she answered. Her hair was still damp from the shower. She hadn't bothered to blow-dry it. She liked to feel washed and clean after a mission. She was dressed in her pajamas that consisted of one of Sasuke's old t-shirts. The entire left drawer in Sakura's dresser was stockpiled with the boys' clothes, and Ino often took the liberty to venture in there as well. Sakura didn't quite know how she felt about that, but she didn't want to act possessive.

"Ya can't bring something home that's already there," Sakura repeated what Kakashi had said to her that night. Despite her slur, Ino still seemed to get the gist of it. If sober people spoke the same language, it made sense that drunk people did so as well, right?

"Bastard."

"Jerkoff," Sakura agreed and lifted the bottle up into the air to estimate how much sweet oblivion that was left in there. She gave up when her eyes wouldn't focus and instead downed another mouthful before she handed it back to Ino.

"Oh, yeah," Ino suddenly perked up, not sensing the bottle that was millimeters away from being smashed into her right cheek. "Why don't ya go do that?"

"Do wha'?" Sakura asked and waved the bottle at her blonde friend.

"Go jerk him off," Ino elaborated with a dismissive gesture and finally took notice of the bottle being waved in her face. It was really fortunate too, because Sakura's grip went slack half a second later. Ino grasped the slippery neck of the thing just in time.

"What?"

"Jerk 'im off," Ino repeated in the same careless drunken manner. "Ya know, his dick. Penis."

"I know what jerk off means, pig," Sakura said and for a moment she forgot what they were discussing. In a gesture of irritation, she snatched the bottle from Ino and gulped down a mouthful of the strong liquor. "I've seen tons… ton… tonses of guys do it."

"Ya've seen Kiba," Ino pointed out with a snort, and there was a brief moment of silence before the two women joined each other in a laugh that most of all sounded like they were choking.

"I've seen Kakashi's too," Sakura managed to get out, hiccupping halfway through the sentence, and it was a good thing that Ino already was on the floor. If she hadn't been, she surely would have toppled right off the couch at that revelation.

"Why, Sakura, ya sly devil," the blond smirked after she had overcome the initial shock that had her gaping like a fish out of water. She then made a big show out of flicking Sakura's nose the way you did to an obstinate child. Sakura wrinkled her nose and batted Ino's hand away.

"Not like that," Sakura grumbled, "I do his physicals, ya know that."

"Mhm," Ino continued. "His physicals."

"Shut up," Sakura rolled her eyes. "'Nyway, ya should be much more down after Sasuke got a girlfriend. Not be all cheery that I'm tied up in a big mess."

"Did'ya forget?" Ino pointed out with a raised brow. "I already did Sasuke a year 'go."

Truth to be told, Sakura had forgotten. Though, she wasn't about to admit that one.

"I guess I did forget," she answered and motioned for the bottle. Thankfully, Ino didn't seem to have any qualms about her friend's forgetful nature, as she handed Sakura the bottle without putting up a fuss.

"I should go visit mom tomorrow," Sakura changed the topic after having taken a sip.

"She's fine," Ino argued and flipped over onto her back. She then grabbed Sakura's right foot for no other purpose than simply grabbing it. Sakura shook it free, not putting much heart into the action, and Ino flipped back onto her stomach with a vacant expression on her face. So much and yet so little made sense when you were blasted out of your mind.

"Watcha thinking 'bout?" Sakura eventually bothered to ask when the vacant expression didn't leave her friend's face.

"Maybe ya should take a talk with her?"

"Who? Mom?" Sakura's incredulous tone spoke volumes. "I do that all the time!"

"No," Ino corrected her, "'bout…'bout enrolling in some home or something."

Sakura, sobering up, looked at the other woman like was she stupid.

"My mom just turned forty-three," she pointed out rather dumbly.

"No, Sakura," Ino said again, this time a bit more exasperated. "A mental home, whatever. An institution. Or some therapy sessions."

It took some seconds for Sakura to react, and even then she didn't know how she wanted to react. She settled for indifferent.

"I haven't thought about that," she eventually answered, furrowing her brows.

"Just keep it in mind," Ino advised. She grabbed Sakura's foot a second time and yanked the other woman off the couch and onto the floor. Sakura retaliated by wrenching her foot free and shoving it in Ino's face. Rivalry never quite died out.

* * *

**Edited March 6, 2013 **


	9. Chapter Eight

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

When Sakura found herself standing outside of Kakashi's apartment complex at nine o'clock the following morning, she blamed it entirely on Ino.

Ino could work her mouth when she really set her mind to it, and clearly that mouth had rubbed off on Sakura's judgment. This was why the pink-haired medic now found herself ascending the stairs that led to Kakashi's apartment on the second floor. She wondered why it was that everybody of their profession tended to picked apartments from the first floor and upwards. They of all people, with their paychecks and ability to kill with a hand stroke, really had no reason to be paranoid about thieves. Then again, you had no chance of not becoming paranoid when there was the constant risk of you being ambushed by a vengeful foe just around the next corner.

She came to a halt in front of number 24. She could just about feel the bones rattle in her body, when she knocked twice on the badly done paintjob. She backed up when the door opened quicker than what she had anticipated.

"Sakura," Kakashi greeted her, his tone bland from where he was standing in the open doorway. He wasn't wearing his hitai-ate, which made his hair fall heavily down the left side of his face to cover the Sharingan. She wondered if it was familiarity that made him keep the eye covered. Even when he had discarded the protective headwear. So little was of familiar nature in their world, after all. Simple pleasures were the only pleasures that lasted.

"Can I…." she trailed off and gestured vaguely towards his apartment. It didn't help her eloquence that the other jonin was giving her his look of doom. The look which told her that she had committed the greatest felony of them all and that she should crawl back into her corner and repent. She could just as well have turned up at his door butt naked. She felt that exposed.

"Is this an appropriate time?" she asked at last.

"It's nine in the morning," he pointed out, but nonetheless pushed his body off the doorframe and stepped aside. His hand held the door open for her and she entered the apartment before he could change his mind. He closed the door behind her.

"So, what can I do for you this?" he asked her somewhat drearily and threw her an expectant look. She knew it was expectant because she noticed the twitch near his eyebrow. The angle from which he was standing made the light from the lamp above fall onto his face in a distracting way that made her forget what she had been about to say.

"I wanted my shirt back. The one that I used to bind your ribs with."

"What could you possibly need it for at eight in the morning?"

"Nine," she corrected him automatically. "Nine in the morning."

"Nine," he agreed and stepped around her. She followed him from the hallway into the sparsely decorated living room. He continued on into the kitchen. They came to a halt and he motioned for her to sit down on one of the rickety kitchen chairs. She did as asked and then watched him in silence as he poured two cups of coffee. She didn't know why he poured two. He never drank or ate in front of her, even though she had seen his face already. The domesticity of the situation was awkward, and when the older man sat down in a just as rickety chair positioned directly opposite of hers, Sakura knew that by accepting the mug of coffee, she had unknowingly agreed to participate in an unofficial interrogation.

"You coming here," he began. "That would be the part where you don't separate emotion from desire. Like we talked about. Remember?"

He had finished the sentence with an upwards motion of his eyebrows, indicating pointedness, and the seat of her chair felt hard and cold beneath her thighs. Maybe she was fed up. Or maybe the other jonin's straightforwardness simply didn't seem so straightforward to her anymore. After all, she had been heavily subjected to it for the past many weeks. At any rate, Sakura surprised herself by answering Kakashi's question quite diplomatically.

"Some of us don't feel the need to do that. For some us it's the same thing. You know me. Even if you haven't been around much for the past year or so, you still know me. You know that I don't desire just anybody. And I don't act on desire alone. That's… not me. And you know me."

She watched the coffee swirl around in the mug for the whole time that she spoke. Even though she hadn't stammered or blushed throughout her small speech, she felt nowhere near strong enough to say the words to the man's actual face.

"I suppose that's relatively correct."

"Don't do that," Sakura warned him with a lifted eyebrow when she recognized his tone of voice. "Don't talk to me like we're on a mission. This is not a business call. I'm not a business call."

"You would rather be the booty call?" the other jonin shot back readily. His voice had taken on a lowered tone that caught both of them by surprise.

"Sorry," he quickly corrected himself. "That was-"

"No. That was an opening right there. You just flirted with me."

The answer took its time in coming. Kakashi obviously didn't want to answer her. "It was a slip."

"This is what I don't get," Sakura said and pushed her mug of coffee towards the middle of the table. "Am I supposed to get it? This back and forward thing that you're doing?"

Kakashi sighed and ran a hand across his face, fingers dragging along the smooth material of his mask. She felt compelled to ask why he didn't just take it off, but maybe now was not the right time to deprive him of the security that it obviously provided him with.

"What do you see when you look at me, Sakura?" he asked eventually. His mismatched eyes met hers and she found that the casualness of the situation made him look so much older than his thirty odd years.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

He reached out and took a hold of her cup of coffee standing rejected in the middle of the table. He turned it so the handle pointed towards her. The invitation was not lost on her, but her hand made no move to reclaim the cup. She sat still in the chair and analysed the situation.

"I don't know what I see," she said at last.

"Hence why you're here," Kakashi finished for her. He sounded weary and worn down. She almost felt guilty if the conversation hadn't been so long overdue.

"I really can't change your mind about this, can I?" he asked.

"No."

He nodded, appearing to be thinking it over.

"Let's make a deal," he proposed, and she sent him a curious look.

"What kind of deal?" she asked hesitantly.

"You figure out the answer to my earlier question. What do you see when you look at me? And then you come tell it to me."

Sakura fell further back in her chair. "Why does everything have to be some sort of test with you?"

"It is?" he asked, genuinely looking as though he was considering her words.

"Never mind," she continued before they went off track. "What happens afterwards I've given my answer?"

"Depends on the answer."

"That's a stupid deal."

"It's what I'm willing to offer," he told her. She could see his point. That was just typical.

"Agreed," she gave in after a brief pause, accepting his terms. A sense of closure washed over her. It was that sense of closure – of finality and of a goal to pursue – that made Sakura reach out and take a sip of her coffee. As she swallowed the lukewarm drink, she ruminated over the situation and how she should go about it.

"And you insisted this wasn't business," Kakashi said in a voice that indicated amusement.

"You were the one who started proposing deals," she said and stopped her rumination just to prove him wrong.

"Are we pointing fingers now?" Kakashi asked and tapped his blunt nails against the handle of his mug. He hadn't touched it yet. Of course. She suddenly realized that he wasn't wearing his gloves. "Because I have some good ones that I have saved for such a day."

She sent him a flat, unimpressed look over the rim of the mug that she was clutching in her hands.

"I guess we aren't then," he concluded. Sakura couldn't see his smile, but she could very well hear it.

"You're an ass," she said and took another sip of the coffee to preoccupy her mind.

"But you want my ass, so that shouldn't be a problem," Kakashi said nonchalantly.

"Sorry. I meant smartass."

He laughed at her witty reply, low and relaxed, and the sound went straight to Sakura's stomach. Her attention was brought to his hands again. It was odd. She had seen his uncovered face more times than his hands. They were nice, she concluded. Slender, yet strong-looking, with the one lonesome vein peeking out whenever the light hit from the right angle. Worn in, was the word that came to her mind the strongest. She never normally noticed hands. Or pretty much any other body part. She liked to think that she wasn't shallow like that. That was what frightened her about Kakashi. With him the outside seemed to count more than what she was comfortable with. And what she liked to admit, as well. Ino would say the man was sexy-ass hot. Sakura would roll her eyes and avert her attention back to the pan on the stove. Because he was. And his personality was just a bit too screwed to win her over without the looks. It was a package deal. Looks and personality outweighed each other. If one went away, the other would lose all appeal.

"Something on your mind?"

"No," she lied and ignored the look on his face. "I don't understand why you don't just take it off."

"That's going for third base pretty quickly, isn't it?"

"Your mask," she elaborated and managed not to let his remark get to her. It was only when you encouraged certain behaviour that you got more of it.

"I like it," he said and rubbed his chin as if to stress the fact.

"I don't believe that for one second."

"Why would I wear it if I didn't like it?"

"I don't know. Because you're a coward?"

The sentence was supposed to go on after that. She was supposed to continue with 'and hide behind a lousy piece of mouldy fabric'. But somehow that part didn't get through out loud, and the sentence stopped there.

"Taking the time to think matters through doesn't make you a coward, Sakura."

She didn't know what they were talking about anymore. She knew that he had answered her question. The problem was that she didn't understand what the question was.

"Not taking initiative does."

"You do what is right. Not what is easy."

"What? You're saying I'm easy?" she asked. "That I take the easy way out?"

"Don't twist my words, Sakura."

"I'm not twisting anything."

He raised a brow. "Sakura-"

"Don't Sakura me," she cut in with a frustrated shake of her head. "You say my name too much. It makes me feel young and stupid again."

Something in his eyes shifted. She realized her mistake.

"I didn't mean it like that," she tried and stared hard at the table even though she very clearly sensed his attempt to make eye contact. There was a brief pause and Sakura feared that the other jonin would be able to hear her unsteady breaths. She felt like throwing up. She wondered if she could throw up her heart. Perhaps then it would stop beating so fast.

"I need you to look me in the face for this, Sakura," Kakashi then told her. His voice was gentle and she wondered if the name was deliberate. At any rate, it made her lift her eyes and meet his calm ones. She had to give him credit that he was facing the storm in her eyes without faltering.

"Tell me," he started in a thoughtful voice. "Tell me that you understand what you are asking for."

It wasn't an order, but it wasn't fully a request either. She would have preferred it if he had asked her to lick his boot instead.

"I get it," she spoke up uncomfortably. "I'm not as naïve as you think."

He made a contemplative humming sound. "Hot-headed would be more accurate."

"Oh, thank you," she mumbled, sarcasm apparent even in her resigned state.

There was a long pause.

"So, let's say that when you figure out your answer, I'll take the initiative that you're speaking so highly of. How does that sound?"

How it sounded?

Like a business deal. Like he was consoling her. The immature kid that she was.

At least they were back to a safe topic, she reminded herself. She would be stupid not to accept the olive branch that the older man was handing her.

"Like you're casting away the responsibility to someone else," she said. She still felt rather shaky, and she tried not to picture just in what ways Kakashi intended to take initiative. She failed. Of course. And the result went straight down below her stomach, and made her cross her legs beneath the table. It never occurred to her to keep the movement subtle until she noticed how Kakashi's eyes trailed down her torso and came to rest at the lowest part of her body that wasn't hidden beneath the table. That only fuelled the heady sensation in her stomach, almost making her thighs cramp up, and she felt like she had to speak up and draw his attention back up her face. Then again, her face was burning hot, so she really was choosing between two evils.

She cleared her throat. "So there's a deadline or something?"

His eyes were brought back up to her face. Good. She viciously hacked down the part of her that felt disappointed.

"Do you need one?" was his somewhat apathetic reply. She was unprepared for him to answer her with a question. Naively, she had expected a simple yes or no.

"I don't think so."

"You need a refill?"

She blinked. "What?"

He motioned towards the mug in her hand that she only now noticed was empty.

"Oh," she remembered and felt dumber than the goats that regularly wandered Tsunade's backyard and ate her plants.

"No, I should be leaving. I have to drop something off at my mom's place and then train with the boys."

Just then, as if to mock her, the very same blond skidded into the room through the open kitchen window. He was followed closely by one Uchiha. They were bickering, the friendly kind, but came to a decisive halt when their eyes fell upon their female friend. Sakura herself was glued to the chair. Luckily Kakashi stepped in.

"That would be why I keep my mask on," he spoke aloud to no one in particular. Sakura was the only one who got the reference. Perhaps 'stepped in' was too much credit. He only made it worse.

"Sakura?" Naruto asked, his voice taking on a tone that Sakura decided she didn't like and thus refused to encourage.

"What are you doing here?" Sasuke asked and that indifferent tone was one she would respond to.

"Discussing the outcome of the mission," she answered. "I felt there were some loose ends."

The speed with which she rattled off the lie surprised even herself. She had never been a very good liar. The fact was only emphasized by how she could feel Kakashi's eyes boring themselves into the side of her face. He ought to be thanking her, the idiot.

"Then it's a good thing we stopped by, huh?" Naruto said and the look his eyes spoke volumes. She dearly hoped she was the only one who sensed those volumes.

"What loose ends?" Sasuke inquired as he sat down on the vacant chair beside Kakashi. She realized then that she should have picked a lie that wouldn't have had any interest to Sasuke and Naruto. Unfortunately, the three men's interests were somewhat similar, and there was no way in hell she could have claimed that she had been discussing shampoo and conditioner choice with Kakashi. The man would never even engage in such a conversation.

"Uh-"

"Fukuda's condition. Or lack thereof, I guess it would be," Kakashi saved her.

"Yes, the repercussions of it," Sakura quickly added.

The whole situation was absurd and Sasuke was quite possibly the only person within the room who didn't get it. Did Kakashi know that Naruto knew? What did Naruto even really know? Had she unknowingly confirmed anything to him?

"Boring," Naruto exclaimed quite unceremoniously and stepped up onto the chair next to Sakura. He placed himself on the backrest and balanced his weight by setting his feet on the edge of the table. If Kakashi was worried about his furniture, he made no move that indicated it.

"Get off the chair. You'll break it, dumbnut," Sakura said and shoved him with her elbow.

"Yeah, you're too fat," Sasuke cut in with a smirk and leaned further back in his own chair.

"Shut up," Naruto said but nevertheless sat down in the chair. Sakura suspected it had more to do with her than Sasuke.

"And so to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Kakashi eventually addressed the two men. Both of them shrugged, neither of them really knowing why they had decided to stop by. Randomness tended to rule those two.

"We tried Sakura's place first," Naruto noted almost defensively. "Then we went here."

He then turned towards the pink-haired woman to his right. "Funny coincidence you happened to be here, Sakura-chan."

She felt like punching him for that one.

"Funny, yeah," she agreed with minimal enthusiasm. "Why were you at my place, anyway?"

The gleam in Naruto's eyes turned deadly.

"Well," he began, dragging out the one syllable. "Sasuke said he missed you since you've been gone for so long-"

"I did no such thing," Sasuke cut in with a dull voice.

"-and he wanted to kiss you hello-"

"Don't make me stand up from this chair, Naruto."

"-but then I told him that he already had Megu-"

"Alright, so, I think I've got the gist of it now," Sakura quickly inserted herself into the conversation. From the spot in his chair, Kakashi was quietly observing the banter of his three former students, wondering if they were even aware of the home away from home which they created for each other. He supposed they were the ideal example of siblings in everything but blood. He didn't want to think about what that made him. Not with what had just transpired minutes earlier.

"Right, sensei?"

"Hm?" he asked, focusing his attention on Naruto who had addressed him.

"He's not your teacher anymore," Sasuke pointed out in the background.

"Well, I gotta head home," Sakura exclaimed and stood up from her seat. "Mom's expecting me."

"I'll follow you out," Kakashi offered and stood up as well. He received odd looks from the two men, but Sakura had already headed for the front door and so he conveniently followed. They stopped by the front door, and Sakura looked expectantly at Kakashi.

"There's no deadline," he confirmed. "But there is an expiration date."

"Don't worry. I don't need long," she told him when he handed her a coat that she recognized as being her own. She didn't even remember having brought one. "Besides, isn't patience supposed to be one of your better traits? I mean, you've put up with us three for this long."

"That depends on the scenario."

"Figures," she commented with a small smirk and began buttoning her coat. "When a piece of ass is on the line, the great Copy Ninja loses his calm."

"You're not a piece of ass, Sakura."

A button slipped from her fingers and she tried to cover it up by smoothening out some imaginary wrinkles in the fabric.

"Right. So, yeah, I'll come around," she finished in a croak and turned towards the door.

"Sakura."

She stopped. Of course.

"Just to make it clear," the older man began. "In this scenario, I find my patience lacking."

She could feel the air around her shift, a clear sign that the body behind her was moving up close. When they were inches away from contact, and that potent scent of pine, rain and earth was clogging her nose, Kakashi reached around her and put his hand on the doorknob. He turned it with a speed that was too slow not to be deliberate. His arm was brushing her side. On purpose. There was no other explanation for it. Stunned to silence, she watched as his hand turned the knob and pulled the door open. Fresh air rushed in, yet it triggered no flight response in her brain. She most of all wanted to slam it shut and not leave. But the boys were still there.

And Kakashi's amused voice alerted her of just that.

"Taking liberties, are we?" he asked.

She whipped around and glared at the man.

"If anybody is taking liberties, that would certainly be you," she snapped and pulled her coat tighter around her body. "What was that all about, anyway? Crowding me like that."

"Sorry," he apologized, sounding anything but sorry.

"Pig," she mumbled, a smile pulling at her lips, and his response was a chuckle.

* * *

When she got home from her mother's place two hours later, Naruto was sitting in Ino's favourite armchair and was flipping through a random magazine. He put it down when Sakura entered.

"So," he said. He didn't have to say more. Neither of them did. He had it figured out. And Sakura knew.

"Yes," Sakura admitted and closed the door behind her. "Is Sasuke aware?"

"It's pretty obvious," the blond said. Sakura sighed. She wasn't willing to deal with that just yet. She put down the bag of groceries that she had been carrying. Then she bent down to untie her sandals and deliberately prolonged the process.

"You two didn't kill him after I left, right?" she asked, half in jest and half in worry.

"I don't know about kill."

"Great," she huffed to herself. "Now I'll have that on my conscience. I bet that grope was him going through on his last wish."

"Grope?" Naruto immediately perked up, but Sakura brushed him off.

"Ino's not here?"

"No," the blond replied.

"Yeah, I bet. She would have kicked you out for being obnoxious."

There was a pause and Sakura waited for it to happen.

"Sakura-"

"No," she interrupted. "Naruto. Can you please just not do this."

His jaw and shoulders tightened and she could just about taste his objection to her request. However, the look on her face must have convinced him, because eventually he gave in and nodded his consent.

"I'll back down tonight, but I can't say anything about tomorrow," he warned her. His insightful streak was rearing its head. Sakura couldn't have stayed friends with Naruto unless he hadn't developed that streak along the way. Together with his maturity streak. It didn't matter that those two streaks were rarely ever present. She just had to be sure that they were there. In case that she would need to call out to them. Like now.

"Tonight is all I need," she assured him and flopped down in the couch opposite of the armchair that he was occupying. He gave her a wary look. She shook her head.

"What is it about him?" he asked. He sounded as though he wanted to be somewhere else. Sakura knew that it wasn't obligation that kept him there. Naruto's sense of loyalty had always been remarkable. Perhaps that was why she bothered to answer him truthfully.

"It's funny. He asked me the exact same question three hours ago."

"What did you answer?"

"I said I didn't know," she admitted. Naruto sent her a suspicious look.

"Really. I told him I didn't know," she repeated. "Do you think I would be this stressed out if I did know?"

"Well, I guess not. So, what, you're gonna move in together and sprout kids now?"

"But I'm already pregnant," she responded to his joke. "You didn't hear?"

For a moment, he didn't know what to say. "You're… kidding, right?"

She kept up the façade. "Why would I be?"

"But-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, since the front door flung open just then and Ino walked inside. She was carrying a dress that Sakura distinctly remembered she had gone out to fetch from the drycleaner earlier that morning. The cleaner was just around the corner. Chances were that Ino had stopped by Shikamaru's place afterwards and had lazed around for the majority of the day. Technically, the two of them didn't live together, but sometimes even they got confused about it.

"Hey," Sakura greeted by habit.

"Sasuke is outside," the blonde woman informed them from the open doorway.

"Ah, I thought it was him," Naruto noted and jumped up from the armchair. Sakura admired his ability to change mood as effortlessly as Ino changed style. Well, perhaps 'admired' was too strong a word. Sometimes she hated it too.

"I don't get why he still won't go inside," Ino complained with a shake of her head and stepped aside so Naruto could sprint out the door and yell his obnoxious greeting to the Uchiha. "I really don't believe he's been traumatized that badly by either of us."

Sakura didn't bother to tell her friend that Sasuke only refused to go inside when Ino was there. That would just be cruel.

"Close the door, will you?" Sakura reminded the other woman. "You've been out all day?"

"Yeah," Ino confirmed and closed the door as Sakura had asked. "Went by Shikamaru's."

"Sounds like you had a good day."

Ino raised a brow at the offhand remark.

"Sounds like yours sucked," she replied.

"I'm gonna go see if I can catch up with the two," Sakura said and got to her feet in the hope of distracting Ino. She wasn't that lucky. Ino eyed her doubtfully, but she didn't object when Sakura headed towards the door. She had gotten as far as the coat rack when Ino decided that she couldn't let her friend leave while having gotten the last word.

"I'll still be here when you get back," she called out somewhat bossily.

"I don't doubt it," Sakura shot back, and slipped out the door before Ino could respond. Sometimes, when you spent time with somebody on a daily basis, they just got too close. The same counted for missions. When you spent time rubbing shoulders with somebody every hour of the day, your flesh would eventually merge together. And the open wound that would be left behind when you pulled back was real nasty.

Yes, Sakura thought to herself as she headed for the training grounds. She really needed to figure out that answer soon.

* * *

**Edited March 6, 2013 **


	10. Chapter Nine

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

She was making breakfast when she turned around with the pan in hand and found a sullen looking Sasuke sitting by her kitchen table. Unsurprisingly, she needed minimal time to recover. Discontent was written all over his finely cut features and for a moment Sakura wondered why her younger self had ever seen anything attractive in the Uchiha. Then she reminded herself that there was a good side to him, too. Unfortunately that side was almost exclusively reserved for Naruto. An on occasion Kakashi. She didn't mind. She didn't need to be reminded of the foolishness of her younger self. Those days were in the past.

"Morning, Sasuke," she greeted and set the pan down on the table. "Did you eat already or do you want to join?"

"When were you going to clue me in?"

She turned back to the sink and moved the dishes around even though she had no intention of cleaning them.

"Naruto figured it out on his own," she said. She felt the natural need to defend herself despite the fact that she felt no remorse about not having poured her guts to Sasuke. Her private life was her own. And contrary to what the populace of Konoha believed, the Uchiha had no privileges there. In fact, Kakashi might have begun to take first place on that account.

"Did he screw you yet?"

She could have told him not to speak to her like that in her home. She could have told him it he was being extremely rude and that he knew better. She didn't. She went for the simplest option.

"No."

She didn't really have to ask why Sasuke was acting the way he was. She pretty much already knew. It had nothing to do with her and Kakashi. Rather it had everything to do with the Uchiha heir feeling like the leftovers of a great feast that every single one of his friends had attended. He felt excessive. And she knew that feeling very well herself, which explained why she was so overbearing with this attack on her person.

"Sasuke," she began. She leant back against the kitchen counter and folded her arms over her chest. "Let's talk about what's really bugging you. You can't blame us for reaching jonin status before you. You knew the consequences when you reapplied for citizenship. You knew you would have to pass the Hokage's psychological tests eventually. You only got off easy in the beginning because the war was still going strong."

Of course he had also neutralized the threat that was Orochimaru. And his brother. But they didn't talk about that. Nobody talked about that.

"I know I fucked up," he said.

"You didn't fuck up. I'm saying, you can't come now and blame us for moving ahead without you, when you moved ahead without us that. All those years ago. You left. We stayed. This is the consequences."

She was surprised that he hadn't smacked her yet. She was surprised that he was actually letting her say these things straight to his face. And she was surprised that she was actually saying them.

"I don't think I'm gonna pass."

The 'ever' was implied.

"Sasuke, that's not tru-"

"Have you been in my head, Sakura?"

"No."

"Then don't give me false reassurances. I don't want false reassurances."

The way he repeated the word made a chill run down her spine. She felt that the space of the kitchen couldn't put nearly enough distance between her and the man seated by her kitchen table. The eggs on the table were turning cold, yet she made no move to reach towards the pan and reheat her breakfast. To be honest, she didn't even feel like eating her breakfast. She wondered why the Uchiha had come to her with his insecurities. Because that was what this was about. He doubted himself. Uchiha Sasuke was openly, albeit perhaps inadvertently, admitting that he doubted his own sanity. He had wrapped those doubts up in a package labeled 'Sakura fancies Kakashi', but those doubts had absolutely nothing to do with her and Kakashi. Whatever he was feeling, it was wearing him down. And she felt that she should have paid better attention. She hadn't seen this coming. Sasuke was hard to read, but he was also far out at this point.

"Naruto is out on a mission again?" Sakura guessed. That had to be why he had come to her and not Naruto. Sasuke gave her a blank look. Sakura was bad with subtle and this situation with Kakashi probably hadn't remedied that.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Sasuke," she admitted and rubbed her arms where they felt like two blocks of lid hanging down from her shoulders. "You don't want reassurance, you don't want consolation, you don't want a topic change. What do you want out of this visit?"

"I wasn't aware there were conditions for visiting you."

"Don't twist my words."

"Don't ask for words that I can't give you."

"You can't expect me not to," she argued. All the men in her life were challenges. They were sick to the core in one way or other. Naruto had an inferiority complex, Sasuke was an attention whore and Kakashi was just an ass. She was probably the sickest of them all, however, seeing that she was the one who befriended only men whose mentality was way over the deep end.

"It's funny," the Uchiha began. "Half a year ago you wouldn't have stood up to me like this."

"Implying?"

"That the turn you've taken is preferable."

It wasn't praise. It wasn't contempt. She didn't understand, and she suspected that it was because she didn't want to.

"I don't get where you're going with this, Sasuke."

He stood up from the chair. She eyed him warily. His demeanor was just off. She could feel it as clearly as if had he proclaimed his undying love for cake. He was advancing on her. She realized this from her position by the sink. He was two steps away from her when she decided that she should probably ask him what he was doing.

"What are you-"

The rest of her sentence was drowned he crossed the last bit of distance and claimed her lips with his. They were just there. It wasn't soft. It wasn't nice. It wasn't any of those things. It was just there, his lips on hers, and all she wanted to do was to forcibly remove them. So she did. She punched him in the jaw and he staggered backwards from the force of the impact. It had been unexpected both for him and for her.

She was surprised that she wasn't angry. She stood there, watching him and waiting for him to recover. She could see the bruise forming on the side of his face already. She hadn't realized she had put that much force behind it.

"Bad judgment," he said eventually. "I apologize."

He fled from the scene, escaping through her open window, and she was left staring after him with her stomach dropping to her feet and her heart following. She wasn't angry. She was sad. For him.

* * *

There was no hesitation when she knocked on Kakashi's front door. If she had been in her right state of mind, and hadn't felt like an imposter in her own skin, she would have picked up on the total blankness of the older man's face when he opened the door. As it was, however, she was as far away from being in her right state of mind as she could be, and she sensed nothing besides the familiar sight of the older jonin.

"Now isn't a good time, Sakura."

She stared. Circumstances were keeping her from understanding the fact that he was sending her away. Something changed on his face when he realized that something was wrong. He appeared much more alert. His spine was straighter and his eye sharper. But before he got to ask her what was wrong, a third voice joined in on the conversation.

"Hello. you must be Sakura?"

Sakura looked at the woman without really looking at her. She hadn't come for her. She had come for Kakashi.

"I'm Kumiko," the brunette introduced herself.

Sakura tried to be polite and introduce herself in return. On a normal day, she would have done so. On this day, her mind remained stuck on the fact Kakashi never had turned her away for the sake of a quickie before. And she didn't know if this hurt worse than Sasuke's recent violation of her person.

She turned around and left.

Behind her, she could vaguely hear the woman asking Kakashi if it was something she had done, but Sakura was down the stairs before she could hear the man's answer. It would have been nice to have him come after her. But that only happened in the romance novels on Ino's bookshelf, and neither Sakura nor Kakashi fit the criteria to get cast in the lead roles of those novels.

She went for a walk around the village. She didn't want to return home and she didn't want to go to Naruto. Sasuke was Naruto's best friend. She feared the blond would take Sasuke's side even though her logical self told her that he most certainly wouldn't. No. That wasn't right. She didn't want to go to Naruto because she knew he would make her admit things she didn't want to admit. Not because he would take Sasuke's side. She had wondered for a long time what it was that made the blond man so indestructible to his enemies. How he could turn bad to good with words that weren't even that eloquent or well-phrased. A year ago, when she had witnessed him reasoning a suicidal blacksmith turned killer into giving up his idiocy – yes, that was how Naruto himself had put it – she had decided that it was his ability to make people see sense. He worked like a mirror. He gave you a close-up of your own reflection. And then it was up to yourself to decide whether you liked what you saw or not. And whether you were willing to work on whatever issues that were reflected in the mirror.

She wasn't ready to work on any cracks in her mirror.

An hour had passed when she turned the corner of the bakery that led to her street. The minute that she stepped into the apartment, she knew he was there. Heaving a sigh, she turned towards the armchair in which he was seated.

"What are you doing here?" she asked and locked the door behind her. She walked into the kitchen with heavy feet. She had no idea where Ino was or if she would suddenly show up. It was like living with a cat; you never knew if you were alone or not.

"I'm not a complete dick, Sakura."

She could hear Kakashi get up from the chair and followed her into the kitchen. She knew she could hear him only because he wanted her to. She was surprised she hadn't yet gone into a fit of seizures. Flashback of the incident had yet to occur before her eyes, and she thanked her academy training for that. Shock was inexcusable in the field. You repressed it instead. At the time, she hadn't thought that the practice would also apply to her private life. Then again, no person in her profession really had a private life to speak of.

"I'm an idiot for expecting you to be available to me every hour of the day," she said.

"You're upset," Kakashi said and studied her with a scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. He didn't apologize, because he didn't really have anything to apologize for. And they had both accepted that.

"Not because of what you think," she said and grabbed a glass from one of the wall cabinets. She poured herself a glass of water, not caring if Kakashi also wanted one.

"You were upset when you came to my door," Kakashi rephrased his words.

"I had a talk with Sasuke. He brought you up. He felt… I don't know. Stepped on? But pulling that card on me is just low. Even of him. He knows all the stuff he's dragged all of us through, and still he has the actual nerve to guilt trip me. I've finished my guilt. I felt plenty of that while he was off to Sound. I've done my part on that account, and it's not fair that the little shit can still do this."

She hadn't counted on the last part coming out as venomously as it did. For a second, she entertained the wild thought that Sasuke had gone to Kakashi and told him about the incident. Then she reminded herself that Kakashi was a master of masks. Literally and figuratively. He wasn't completely calm because Sasuke had reported back to him. He was completely calm because he was handling the situation like he would handle a mission. Attack and resolve. That was the theory he lived by and Sakura couldn't fault him for that. She even admired him a little for it.

"I agree," he said.

Sakura stood with the glass of water in her hand and stared at the jonin. "That's what you have to say?"

"What more do you want me to say?"

It was the exact same thing she had asked Sasuke. Having it thrown back at her this soon, she now understood Sasuke's reaction. She debated if she would be diagnosed insane if she hurled the glass at Kakashi's head.

"If you're gonna be an ass you can just leave," she said and pushed past him, shoving the glass into his hands where the water spilled over and onto his vest.

"I think I missed something here?" he asked.

She ignored him and headed straight for her bedroom. She was intent on creating as much distance as possible between her and Kakashi. A hairsbreadth away from crossing the threshold of her bedroom, she let out an embarrassing squeak when her arm was grabbed and she was pulled face to face with the Copy Ninja. His fingers dug into the softer flesh of her upper arm. It was the first time he had touched her willingly since that night in the bar. And she shocked herself with the fact that she had kept count. She didn't realize that she had kept count of it.

"You wouldn't be this upset over a simple conversation with Sasuke," he said. "What did he do, Sakura?"

It was as if she was ten again and was standing before her teacher, having to give an account for her actions on the battle field. He was angry. The grip on her arm tightened and she clenched her jaw. She didn't try to wrench free. That would literally do more damage than good. But she didn't want him to touch her. Not when she was about to say something very bad.

"He kissed me. That's what happened. When I came to your door, I wasn't in my right mind. Let it go."

That was when she realized, thick as she was, that Sasuke was the one Kakashi was angry with. He was angry at Sasuke, because Sasuke had put that look on Sakura's face. The look that she had come to Kakashi's door with. The look that he had been greeted with. She wanted to take her words back. But she didn't want to make any excuses for the Uchiha either.

"Does Naruto know?"

"No," she answered, confused as to why he would bring Naruto up. "I didn't want to tell him. I went straight to you."

The last part had felt natural to add. There was a moment of high tension before Kakashi let out a quiet sigh.

"It's never nice to have something taken from you right under your nose," he concluded and let go of her arm. She had to refrain from rubbing the sore muscle. Instead, she focused on his words. All anger had seemingly deflated from the older man and she couldn't help but wonder why. She knew better than to ask, however, so she kept that thought to herself. It was just another thing to keep her awake at night.

"Are you talking about the kiss?" she inquired softly. "That he took it from me and it wasn't nice?"

She wasn't about the object the niceness of the kiss, because there really had been none, but it might have come out as such.

"In a sense, I suppose," Kakashi answered. She began feeling stupid just standing there.

"I punched him," she said and rubbed her elbow awkwardly. "He said it was bad judgment. He said the kiss was bad judgment on his part."

"I bet he did."

She looked up, surprised by the bite to the man's words.

"I hadn't known you would…" she stopped, thinking too late that now perhaps wasn't the time. She stopped too late, though. Kakashi had caught onto her train of thoughts as easily as he would catch onto the lie that the occasional enemy threw at him.

"I think it should be common knowledge by now that we have progressed beyond simple friendship, Sakura," he pointed out in a dull voice. For a brief second she felt almost ashamed that she had thought so little of his involvement with her.

"I may not act upon it, but the sense of ownership is still here."

"Ownership?" she asked and even to herself her voice came out harsh and bitingly cold. Kakashi seemed to realize his mistake in the space of half a second. He held up his hands in a show of surrender.

"You don't own me," she said and poked him in the chest with a finger. "Though granted, you have more right to me than Sasuke, I suppose."

"That's a consolation."

The sarcasm didn't go unnoticed by her and she sent him an unamused look.

"I think you've overstayed your welcome."

"You wouldn't send a poor old man out on his own at this hour of the day, would you?"

"It's five."

"Oh, really?" he asked as if he didn't know. "Then it's the right time for a drink, isn't it?"

An hour later, Sakura found herself swayed by the Copy Ninjas charm. Or his use of fancy words and manipulative techniques. Whatever you preferred. She was downing her second glass of liquor down the bar at the corner of her street. Thankfully being a ninja meant having a high alcohol tolerance. That and most bars happily turned a blind eye to age regulations. This one is particular, seeing that it was primarily inhabited by minors during the weekends. Minors who had returned home from severing heads and knotting innards on enemies of the state. The word 'minor' was a relative word in Konoha.

Kakashi was taking her thoughts off Sasuke. Sakura realized that much and she felt grateful that he was trying.

"You think I should have gone to Naruto?"

He twirled the glass in his hand. "No."

"Sasuke probably went to him, yes," Sakura agreed with a sigh. Her head was feeling heavy and it wasn't the alcohol.

"Not necessarily."

"What?"

"I believe Naruto would have taken your side and sent Sasuke to the hospital. And however much in the wrong, the guy doesn't deserve that for stealing a kiss."

She sniggered when a sudden thought hit her and perhaps the alcohol was taking her harder than usual.

"If he'll put Sasuke in intensive care for kissing me, imagine what he'll do when-"

"No," Kakashi cut her off with a pointed look and emptied his glass in one gulp.

It occurred to her that maybe he hadn't brought her to the bar simply because he wanted to take her thoughts off Sasuke. Maybe he had wanted neutral ground, so he wouldn't go and break the deal they had made. Or so that she wouldn't.

"No what?"

"Don't ask for obvious answers."

"I don't think it's obvious," she lied, baiting him. "Otherwise I wouldn't have asked."

"You're pushing it," the other jonin replied, his eyes fixed on the bartender in an attempt to get a refill. Irritated by his aloofness and the fact that his attention wasn't on her – yes, that actually bothered her – Sakura went for her newly developed attention-gaining technique. She listened to her inner voice and acted on it.

"Would you rather I jerk it? Instead of a kiss?"

Her uncharacteristic forwardness was rewarded. Kakashi one exposed eye swerved back onto her face, and she could have sworn that a jolt raced through her body. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave. And with good reason, she had to admit. She had been out of line with that one. But what had he expected when he practically showered her with alcohol? Then his gaze flickered down to her neck and up again, sweeping past her mouth and up to her unblinking eyes.

"Try another verb."

She didn't get it at first. Then, when his eye went back down to her mouth and stayed there for too long to be incidental, she caught onto the insinuation.

"That's vile," she tired and took a sip of the liquor in her glass.

"But nevertheless true," the older man commented with a nonchalant shrug. He finally caught the attention of the bartender and ordered his refill. Sakura used the moment to look away and regain her composure. She had kept down her blush, but her heart was hammering away like a trapped bird in her chest. That might also have had something to do with the fact that she was drinking, but she was pretty sure that it had more to do with Kakashi's words just now.

"It's nice of you though," she said. When he looked at her strangely, she figured she should elaborate.

"To take my mind off Sasuke," she explained and waved her fingers in her air as if to illustrate his kindness.

"I think you've misunderstood. I'm getting you drunk so I can take advantage of you."

"Yeah. Of course, that's it. I feel bad for punching him, though. I mean a simple no would have sufficed, I guess."

"Don't think of his intentions as purely good, Sakura. He can be manipulative to get what he wants."

"As certain others," she reminded the older jounin pointedly. "So, what do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"His reasoning," she elaborated, curious to know if the older man had reached the same conclusion as her. When he answered, the words were calculated and sounded rehearsed.

"I think he saw you slipping away and acted upon that."

"Slipping away? I've had boyfriends before this…. whatever it is we have," she finished lamely, though Kakashi didn't seem to notice. He shrugged and took another smooth gulp.

"I'm not an oracle, Sakura. What do I know?"

More than most, she wanted to say.

"I remember how we used to worship you."

"Yes, why did you stop?"

She rolled her eyes. "You passed your expiration date."

"Oh?" he asked, raising his brow.

"Yeah. A get a hold of some more liquor, will you? I'm sobering up and it's not pretty."

They spent the next two hours like that. Gibbering back and forth, pausing only for refills and bathroom breaks. When she got home around midnight, all thoughts about Sasuke were erased from her mind. Instead, now that Sasuke was successfully wiped away, she found her thoughts circling the woman Kumiko. Jealousy finally reared its ugly head. Hours too late and way too powerful.

* * *

**Edited March 8, 2013 **


	11. Chapter Ten

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Ten: **

Naruto was livid.

"The cheating bastard did what?"

She had honestly considered not telling him, but she knew that he would pick up on it sooner or later. The guy was a lot more perceptive than he let on.

"Naruto, I only told you because you promised not to freak out. And I would like to talk to him myself before you go and play the protective card, alright?"

"Well, when is that gonna be?"

"Whenever I feel like it," she answered curtly. "And don't pout. You're a grown man. It looks wrong."

They were wandering about in the village, choosing random roads and alleyways, and had now passed the Hokage Tower for the third time in the past hour with the sun baking down on them from a cloudless sky. Neither of them had been hungry, but they had both been reluctant to cancel their lunch date. This had led them to where they were now as they walked around aimlessly on the streets of Konoha, discussing Sasuke's misdeed and the repercussions of it.

"It's mean. Telling and then pulling this prohibition on me. When I meet him tonight, I can do shit."

She wasn't surprised by the big word. She was surprised he had used it correctly.

"Tonight?"

"We're gonna have a couple of beers. Guy night."

"Let's change the subject. When did you last go on a date?"

Technically, they had talked about this during the mission. But Sakura couldn't decide on any other topic to bring up. They all seemed to lead back to Sasuke.

"Do-"

"No, they do not count," she answered. "Shoving your dick into a random girl up against the wall of your apartment on a Saturday night nevercounts, alright?"

He stared at her with his mouth slightly agape. Kakashi had been rubbing off on her as of late. Beating around the bush had never been her style, but it had grown a lot more pronounced in the past weeks leading up to now.

"I haven't seen Ino lately. You know anything about that?"

"You're the one who practically lives with her," Naruto said. He still looked thrown by her previous comment.

"She's not on a mission. She would have told me. How about Shikamaru's place?"

"He hasn't said anything."

His eyes were now roaming the street stretching out before them. They were both to the more trafficked part of town. His blue gaze zeroed in on something ahead of them. By habit, Sakura followed his line of sight and very nearly stumbled over her own feet with the punch to her gut that she took. There was no mistaking that hair and the accompanying slouch. But what threw her off balance was the familiar dark hair and pouting mouth of the woman attached to Kakashi's arm. Sakura knew that woman. She had never seen Kakashi with the same woman twice, but if it had to happen, she would have preferred for it to be a woman who hadn't witnessed her Sasuke breakdown.

"Kumiko," she said. Next to her Naruto raised a brow.

"Who?"

"The woman."

"Well, I can see that. What do you think he's doing?"

In the moment, Sakura considered asking Naruto to be her boyfriend. He didn't kiss her without her consent and he didn't work two women at the same time. So far, he was the one with most long-term potential.

"I have no idea," she replied truthfully and watched the couple advance on them. They hadn't noticed the medic and thejonin standing still in the middle of the crowded road. An absurd picture, really. It was like a horror movie. You knew what was going to happen and yet you could do nothing but stand by and let it happen. She knew there was going to be a confrontation. She could feel it in the harsh heaves of her chest where anger was pooling rapidly. And on some level that suited her just fine. She wanted a confrontation. She wanted to yell at the insufferable bastard and call him every insult she could think off. She hadn't yelled at Sasuke because she had felt sorry for him. She didn't feel sorry for Kakashi.

"Kakashi-sensei!"

Naruto's yell reached across the heads of several citizens before it reached the couple. Upon hearing the yell, both Kakashi and Kumiko turned their attention in Naruto's direction. The direction which also happened to be the direction of Sakura who looked about ready to smash someone's face in. She felt about ready to smash someone's face in.

"Naruto, Sakura," the older man greeted with a wave that looked more like he was swatting a fly. Next to him, Kumiko smiled at them. She was pretty when she smiled. She was pretty in general. Sakura wanted to wipe that smile off her face. With a flying fist preferably.

"How are you do-?"

"I need to talk to you," Sakura cut Kakashi off. She didn't give him any time to respond before she turned around and walked away. She knew he would follow. He wasn't enough of an idiot not to.

Five minutes later, she decided that there was finally enough space between her and Kumiko.

"Jealousy doesn't become you," Kakashi remarked when they came to a halt. From their position in the alleyway behind a random fruit and vegetable stand, they were perfectly hidden from public eyes. It wasn't reputation which held Sakura back from punching the man in the face. It was the knowledge that she would be the one to clean up the mess afterwards. And then the guilt would be harder to ignore.

"Jealousy becomes no one," she countered. There was a brief pause in which both of them sized the other one up, trying to figure out if they should play on offense or defense. In the end, Kakashi broke the heavy silence.

"We're adults, Sakura. If you can't accept that I'm not waiting around for you, we should stop this now."

"You demand of me to find an answer and yet you can't keep it in your pants until I've met that demand?" she asked, her voice taking on an incredulous tone that civilians on the other side of the fruit stand would have heard if she hadn't had the sense to lower her voice towards the end. It had nothing to do with her receiving a sharp look from the man standing before her. She chose to lower her voice.

"Really, Sakura, must you always take the fun out of life? This waiting is hard enough, already."

"I don't appreciate that pun. And don't patronize me either. I've told you this before."

"Only you would mistake flirting for patronizing."

"Flir—shut up, you don't flirt, you turn lewd and perverse."

"If you have the energy to be jealous, you should use it working on that answer instead."

"I'm not working on anything. It's not a mission. And stop calling me jealous, thank you."

He seemed to search for his next sentence. He was probably trying to piece something together that wouldn't make her blow up furtherer. During that short pause, Sakura realized just how ridiculously small the overall space of the alleyway was. The lack of space made breathing entirely too difficult. Consequently it also put them at way too close quarters for her self-restraint to remain in control. She couldn't stretch out her elbow without having her palm touch Kakashi chest. For a brief moment she entertained the idea of doing just that. Then the other jonin spoke up and she broke free from her reverie.

"Why should I stop calling you jealous?"

She blinked, having lost her voice for a second. "Because you're the one in the wrong here."

"I doubt that."

"I don't."

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the stance of the Copy Ninja turned authoritative. Sakura found herself backing up by instinct. Her shoulder blades brushed against the stones of the wall behind her and ultimately stopped her backwards retreat.

"And at what point did I agree to go exclusive?" he asked. Sakura had lost her voice entirely. "If anybody is in the wrong here, Sakura, it's you."

The reprimand in his voice made her lower her eyes to the ground. She missed the flash that flickered across Kakashi's face.

"What if I said it now?"

He stared at her, pretending not to know what she was talking about, but she knew it was so much simpler than that. He wanted to hear her say it. And to some extent she probably needed to hear it from her own mouth as well.

"That I would like it if you didn't mess around with others until I've figured out what I want from you."

She hadn't realized how much she was asking of him before she had said it out loud. She was asking a lot. A whole lot. Her legs were shaking. It was a motion that would be invisible to the untrained eye, but Sakura knew that Kakashi's eye was anything but untrained. Suddenly, she was thinking back on the last time that adrenaline had done such a number on her body. It had been during a mission with Naruto, Hinata and Kiba a year ago. Naruto had taken a deathly blow to the chest for her. She had healed him okay, but the reminder wasn't in the flesh. It was in the mind. And her legs still shook whenever that particular memory woke her up at night. Her entire body did.

"Have sex."

Her eyes shot up to Kakashi's face. "Sorry?"

"I'll agree if you narrow it down to sex," he said.

"What else is there?"

Immediately, she knew she had asked the wrong question. The glint in Kakashi's eye turned outright deadly. And not because he was angry.

"No, don't answer that," she added quickly and held up a hand up to almost physically stop him from answering. She only lowered the hand when she was sure that he had no intention of replying. He was looking at her – staring, really – and she was once more reminded of the lack of personal space separating them. And also the fact that she didn't know what to make of it.

"I believe it's only fair that the conditions are equal for us both, is it not?"

"Kakashi, who would even-"

"I can name one."

"I know full well what you're hinting at. And I don't appreciating such a low blow. You know I'm not interested in him."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that this was the first true discussion they had ever had.

"Maybe I'm not sure how you express interest," the older man said with a perfectly poised indifference to his words. Sakura felt like a child next to him. Her arguments lacked solid fundament and her legs threatened to give out under her if the discussion went on much longer. She almost felt physically ill being this close to him and having this argument at the same time. To top it off, she had no idea what Kakashi had just insinuated, and as always Sakura went for honesty when she was confused.

"I don't understand what you're implying."

"I'm implying I want an answer soon."

"Well, that's some awful mood swings you have there," she tried to joke, but the joke turned out feeble and hesitant. "A few days ago I couldn't even get you to-"

He took a slow step forward, invading her space to where it was virtually non-existent. Her jaws clamped shut like had they been bound by elastics. When Kakashi made a decision, he worked for it. He stopped stalling and he stopped hesitating. He just went for the jugular. She should have remembered that. Her stomach was one big knot. She knew that panic was visible in every muscle of her body. There was nothing she hated more than having her control taken from her. By herself no less. She took a deep breath to get her body's adrenaline level back under control. She had miscalculated the distance between her and the other jonin, however, because the motion made her breasts push up against his chest in a suggestive manner. She recoiled back against the wall as if burned. She thought she heard him exhaling above her, a harsh sound too, but the blood was pounding too loudly in her ears for her to be sure.

She truly hated not being in control of her body.

"You say my name too much," she spoke up quietly. She hoped to distract Kakashi from what had just transpired. She knew it was a long shot. And true enough, the Copy Ninja completely ignored her remark. He instead addressed their proximity. Naturally.

"Uncomfortable?"

"You in general make me uncomfortable."

She was distracted by the soft hum to his voice. If their knees hadn't touched right then and alerted her of his physical presence, she would have missed the fraction of an inch that he moved closer. There, in the stupid alleyway on this stupid day, she was reminded all too vividly of that night so many weeks ago. That night by her doorstep where he hadn't even been as close as he was now, but where she had been reminded that he was a man and she was very much a woman. Emerged in thoughts, she almost flinched in surprise when she felt fabric rub against her palm. She looked down and found her fingers buried in Kakashi's sleeve.

"That's my sleeve," Kakashi pointed out unhelpfully.

She didn't let go.

She probably should have.

"You're contradicting yourself, you know," she said.

"If you hadn't gotten jealous, I wouldn't be doing this," he replied. They were assassins. Killers. They enjoyed nothing if not the chase of the kill. Their current predicament was a testament to that. Kakashi wasn't backing up. With Sakura being Sakura she opted for violence.

"I should punch your eyes out of their sockets right now."

"I suppose so," Kakashi agreed. His voice was heavy with something that she couldn't decipher.

"Kakashi."

"Mhm?"

"You should back up now."

"Did you know I have a weak spot for medics who are too proud to admit they have a possessive streak?"

She didn't have to strain her ears to hear him even though he had lowered his voice further. Their close proximity took care of that problem. She could hear him breathing. Every breath. She could feel it on her face.

"I don't—this is public."

"I know."

For a long moment, none of them moved.

"Back up."

"Let go of my sleeve, so I can."

There was a loud yell just outside the fruit stand. The reaction was immediate. Sakura let go of Kakashi's sleeve and Kakashi backed up against the wall of the opposite building. He looked at her face once. Then he took off without any explanation or a goodbye. She was actually grateful. A word from him and she would have pounced.

"I don't know if that was more disturbing than disgusting."

She whirled around, her heart high up her throat, and found Naruto leaning up against the entrance of the alley. He had a small smile playing on his lips and that was probably the one thing that kept her from freaking out on him.

"For me? Definitely disturbing," she answered and shook her head to clear her mind. "Though for you I would guess disgusting."

He waited for her to come up next to him. "Not really. You should thank me though. I swear to you, this must be some amazing hook-up place I don't know about, because I had to chase away a gazillion smooching couples while you were in here."

If she had had any blood left in her brain, she would have paled. As it was, she felt tapped from all of her blood. If there was a single drop left, it was down south and not up north. At her lack of response, Naruto's face turned worried.

"You okay?"

They left the alley and she got some of her composure back. Enough to ask the one question that stood clearest in her mind, at least: "What happened to the woman?"

"She got impatient and left. I dunno."

Pause.

"Hey, you up for some food?"

Sometimes she didn't know if her friend was just overly accepting or selectively blind. This was one of the times where she truly feared the answer.

* * *

Ino was there when Sakura stepped through her front door. From behind the stove, the blonde took one look at her friend, and that was that. Sakura knew she was transparent in basically everything but missions, but she hadn't expected for Ino to read and analyze the entire alleyway encounter from just one look at her face.

"I know," Sakura beat the other woman to it. "And no, it did nothing for my decision."

"Really, Sakura," the other woman reprimanded. "You need to just go for what you want."

"I don't know what I want, remember?"

"You do," Ino insisted and stirred the soup with the ugly blue wooden spoon that her mother had given her for Christmas. Sakura vaguely wondered if there was enough food in there. She felt severely disinclined to start cooking another portion and had half the mind to simply go to bed without food.

She didn't want to admit that she indeed knew what she wanted. The topic of her inner debate was the consequences of that want. What would happen if she really did just go it? Like she wanted to? During her years in the Academy, the one rule above them all had always been to know what you stepped into. You didn't structure and order an attack without having thoroughly studied a map of the territory. Teammates would die. You didn't impersonate a man without knowing his life history and economics. Teammates would die. You didn't cut off somebody's head unless you were absolutely sure it was the right head. Teammates would die. The principle was drilled into her psyche. She had no idea what she was stepping into with Kakashi. And this fact, coupled with her field experience and Academy training, was holding her back. She backed off, leaving both her and Kakashi at a stalemate with her inability to act beyond the ethical and practical boundaries of their world. The boundaries of survival. Sakura had her answer. She knew why she was drawn to him. He was virtually everything that her previous boyfriend failures had been. Yet he wasn't a failure.

"That frown looks hurtful?"

"Just thinking about how messed up we get from chopping heads off for a living."

"I could've told you that years ago. Look at Sasuke."

The sudden stillness in Sakura's body was a clear sign that she still hadn't fully processed the Sasuke issue yet.

"I guess. I just never really thought it applied to us."

"What? You mean the two of us?"

She nodded and watched as Ino finished up the soup.

"Every single one of us is fucked up," Ino said. "Naruto is a megalomaniac. Shikamaru has trust issues rivaling only those of Neji. Sasuke should be the poster boy for insanity incarnated. And you have a fear of intimacy. They call that a commitment phobia, you know."

"I do not have a commitment phobia. And even if I did, it wouldn't be because I kill people."

She was an emotional wreck, yes, but an actual phobia was taking it a little too far. If she absolutely had to have a phobia, kakorrhaphiophobia would be the most fitting one. Never accept defeat. That had been the second most important rule. You lost an arm in battle and you were heroic. You lost your life in battle and you were a legend. But if you fled a battle with your body intact, you were a coward. Branded for life as the one that nobody would want to cover their back.

"Kill enemies," Ino corrected her.

"Right," Sakura smiled ironically. "'People' sounds too human."

"You're in a good mood, huh?"

"The idea of different moods is an illusion. There's one mood and then the rest is positive or negative influences," the medic replied tiredly, running a hand through pink hair that felt like sandpaper. The strands caught on skin that should have been too rough to be a woman's. Sakura generally didn't have problems with not feeling specifically womanly or feminine. But lately her lack of femininity, both in mannerisms and in thought patterns, had bothered her.

"And pessimistic too."

That couldn't be anything new, Sakura thought to herself.

"What's in the soup?"

"Vegetables. On a diet, remember?"

"Yes, when are you not?" Sakura remarked, her voice dull. As a professional assassin, nutrition was alpha omega. As a medic, Sakura knew this all too well. It was acceptable to forgo proper nutrition while in the field. It was when you got home, however, that you needed to make up for that lost nutrition. By constantly dieting, Ino did no such thing, and even though Sakura hated it, she had stopped trying to make Ino see sense years ago. Despite the fact that Ino herself was well-schooled in the medicinal study – and with Sakura as her mentor no less – the blonde woman still preferred to thoroughly blind herself when it came to outer appearance. It wasn't that big of a surprise, really. Ino was vain. Sakura had always known this. She had accepted it. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just different than herself. Perhaps Kumiko was vain as well? Did Kakashi like them vain?

"There's that frown again."

"It's my face," Sakura responded unenthusiastically and slurped down the first spoonful of soup. It tasted surprisingly good. A bit salty, but good. Sakura was a lousy cook. Lack of practice. Or interest.

"It's an ugly face. Change it."

"Thank you. It's a bit salty."

"My hand slipped. Not too bad though?"

Sakura shook her head.

"I feel a bit bad for Tenten."

Sakura looked up from the pieces of leek floating around in the soup. "Tenten?"

"Yeah. With the arranged marriage and everything."

"Tenten is getting married?"

This time Ino sent Sakura an exasperated look.

"No. Neji is. You know Tenten has always had a thing for him. Really, Sakura, Neji's marriage is the juiciest news all around the village. The heir of the Hyuuga main branch settling down and all. Seriously, where are you keeping your head these days?"

Wherever Kakashi was, it seemed.

"I don't do town gossip:"

"You used to," Ino pointed out and Sakura thought she heard disappointment in there somewhere. Alongside accusation. "He's fucking you up, you know. Kakashi. And not in the way you want him to. He's going about this the entirely wrong way."

"Why don't we discuss your life for a change," Sakura said and stared hard at the spoon lying immobile in her hand.

"Because the juice in your life has officially upped mine."

Ino couldn't see it, but Sakura smashed her nose in right then.

"It's not 'juice'. I'm not having the time of my life here, Ino."

"I'm trying to take your mind off the negative side," Ino replied, her voice tight.

"I know."

It didn't matter how much salt that was in there. The soup had lost all its taste by then.

* * *

**Edited March 8, 2013 **


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Second Time Around  
**By Frozzy

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

Neji was getting married and Sakura was invited for reasons beyond her understanding. Granted, nearly every jonin within the village was invited since Hyuuga marriage protocol apparently wanted it to be as such. Surely though, she could not be so important to the renowned Hyuuga clan that they would find it insulting if she declined the invitation. Neji might, but it was probably her conscious talking rather than reality. There would be hundreds of guests. Most likely, she wouldn't even get within breathing distance of the guy, much less get to personally congratulate him. And they weren't that good friends. She had patched him up a good deal of times, and those times were always extremely pleasant since he proved an intelligent conversationalist, but that was all. A couple of conversation on a hospital bed didn't equal best buddies. If so, Sakura would have had an entire generation of best friends.

"You have to go," Ino insisted. It was one of those rare mornings where both of them had a free schedule and Ino had stopped by so they could enjoy a lengthy and nutritious breakfast together.

"I fail to see why that is so," Sakura said and buttered her slice of bread with measured swipes of her knife. They were still in their nightwear. Ino in some fancy silk and lace combo, and Sakura in one of Naruto's or Sasuke's old shirts with her hair bunched up on top of her head. Sakura didn't look pretty when she slept, and she didn't wake up pretty. Ino did. Somehow. Sakura hated it.

"People expect the head of the hospital to be present at large social gatherings like these."

"I'm not head of the hospital. Especially not now since my transfer."

"You might as well be."

They had had this discussion before. Ino kept telling Sakura that she had to aim higher. Sakura kept insisting that she wanted to work with the patients and not the paperwork.

"Ino-"

"Okay, fine. You want the real reason? Because Kakashi will be there and you can quit this self-appointed cold turkey of yours."

"It's not a cold turkey."

"It's been two months," Ino tried to reason. "Obviously, he wants you to make the move."

He did. Sakura had just been too much of a chicken to take that last step.

"It would seem so," Sakura answered evasively.

"So why haven't you?"

"I don't know."

And it was the truth. Sakura didn't know what it was that had scared her off for nearly two months now. She was digging herself deeper into a hole for each day that passed. She knew that. But what if she was already too far down that hole to have any chances of digging herself back out? She was stalling. She knew what she needed to do, but she wasn't doing it.

Attachment didn't come easy to her. Sasuke was the first guy to be the main respondent of her unhealthy attachment issues. Kakashi wasn't exactly offering her attachment in the way that she was truly seeking it, but in a world where you could very well die from turning a corner on the street, you took the closest you could get to what you really wanted. She didn't expect the man to grow a new persona. They weren't compatible on any other level than intelligence and sexual drive. Then again, that wasn't wholly true either. Sakura was nearly celibate, while Kakashi could very well be picking up new women at the end of every week for all she knew. In the past years, Sakura had praised herself for how she had dismissed the idea of romantic love. That misguiding and infantile love which had been the reason to her obsessive pursuit of Sasuke for years on end until she had finally understood why he kept rejecting her. On that account, Sasuke had been years ahead of his age, whether he had been aware of it or not. These days, however, Sakura had begun doubting if she truly had shed herself of that adolescent idea of the perfect romance. Why else would she have spent the past month wishing for Hatake Kakashi to crawl through her window at night and take up the spot next to her in her bed? When she knew all too well that he never would?

"I don't know, Ino," she repeated. "And I would prefer it if we drop the subject now."

"It's not a subject, Sakura, it's your life. And you're postponing it as though it has no expiration date."

"Expiration dates are for food products and not people. Besides, the reception is this evening and I can't possibly find a proper cocktail dress fit for such an occasion on such short notice," she said and took a bite of her bread, clearly signaling that this was the end of the topic.

"Well, not if you keep up this attitude."

"What do you want me to do, Ino?" Sakura exclaimed, her voice escalating in volume as her patience started to fail her.

"Hey, don't take it out on me because your man is being a jackass."

"He's not being an ass."

"He's not—then what the hell do you call his sorry excuse of-"

"Cut it out, Ino. It's mychoice to make. Not his."

Sakura realized her error around the time that Ino's face went from pissed off to confused.

"What? Your choice- what are you talking about? What choice, Sakura?"

Sakura cleared her throat and pushed the chair back from the table as she rose from her seat.

"We're not the same size, but do you perhaps have a dress I can borrow?" she asked, grabbing her plate and moving across the kitchen towards the sink. Dumping the dirty plate and knife into the sink, she turned on the hot water and set out to clean the dishes left over from dinner the previous day. For almost a full minute, the air in the kitchen was loaded with something indefinable but frosty. Sakura had to struggle not to openly retreat from the situation. Her skin was itching to crawl off her bones and this had all the potential to turn disastrous.

"The jade one is at the cleaner," Ino eventually broke the standstill. Her voice was uncharacteristically toneless. "But I have a red one that might fit you if you don't mind it being a big baggy in the bust area."

"It should be fine. I'll wear a bra beneath to fill it out."

"It's backless," Ino added.

"I'll work my way around it. So, if we're going there together, when should we leave?"

* * *

The actual ceremony of clan marriages was a highly private matter, and so the guests had been invited to the reception only. Upon arriving, Sakura immediately abandoned Ino and steered for the food. Not because she was particularly hungry, but because she knew that most of her friends would be found nearby. She found Naruto standing together with Kiba, and for a moment she felt guilty that she was relieved it wasn't Sasuke. He had apologized to her for his impromptu kiss within a week after the transgression, but it was still awkward between the two of them. Naturally, Naruto had forgiven his friend the minute that he had cast eyes on him, but Sakura hadn't expected anything else and she hadn't particularly cared either. Besides, Naruto should have quit his protection of her virtue a long time ago. The minute that she lost it, to be more precise.

"Looking good, Sakura," Kiba greeted her with a playful leer when she came within speaking distance of the two men. Naruto had been oblivious to her approach until then, and in his excitement he had pulled her into one of his spontaneous hugs before he had had time to study the cut of the dress she was wearing. When he did notice, however, he immediately retreated to his own space with a scandalized expression of his face.

"It's a backless dress, Naruto. Not lingerie. Don't make a scene."

"Indeed, Uzumaki. Don't be a sore loser because the lady will attract actual people and not the flies that gather around you," Kiba assisted not so very helpfully.

"I don't trust your judgment, Dogbreath," Naruto replied. The danger had passed.

"So, did you two get a chance to congratulate Neji or the bride?"

"Haven't even seen the guy," Kiba said. "Not sure I would like to either. Poor bastard."

Sakura didn't even know who the bride was. She should perhaps have thought of that earlier.

"Sasuke got lucky and caught both of them by accident," Naruto said. "He would probably say the opposite, though."

The reception was held outside the Hyuuga compound. Tables and benches had been set up for the occasion, though the food was stationed inside the main house. The smell of the many dishes had people flocking to the building, and it was quickly getting crowded. So far, Sakura had seen six people that she could name, not including the persons that she regularly associated with. Shikamaru had been easy to spot with his gravity defying hair, and the same went for Chouji with his sheer size. Shino had been harder, since he had donned a suit for the occasion. She would have to reprimand Naruto for not doing that. Tenten and Lee had been the hardest to locate, but she had placed them somewhere near the majority of the Hyuuga clan. Near Neji, probably. The rest of the faces that she had recognized had been people she had seen around the hospital.

"I'm gonna head outside before I suffocate in here," Sakura told Naruto. With her heels on she was approximately the same height as him, so she didn't have to stand on her toes and speak into his ear for him to hear her above the chatter in the room. She did put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, though.

"You want me to come with you?"

She frowned. "Why would I want that?"

Naruto had never been a good liar. It wasn't that he couldn't tell a lie, because he could. All ninjas had to master that skill. It was more so the fact that he couldn't hide his distaste for lying and it therefore showed plainly on his face whenever he was being dishonest. Strangers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Sakura could.

"What is it?" she insisted when he failed to respond. "Naruto?"

"Kakashi just walked past the entrance," Kiba spoke up.

Sakura's face blanched as all blood headed south of her neck. What was Kiba implying?

"Kiba knows," Naruto added rather unnecessarily.

"Okay," she began. She would not make a scene when she had just told Naruto not to. "Why is it that Kiba knows?"

"I didn't tell," Naruto assured her.

"I don't have heightened senses for nothing, you know," Kiba said from the sideline, obviously offended by her insinuation that he couldn't have figured it out by himself. She had dated the guy. She didn't have very high expectations and sadly there was a reason for that.

"Fine, fine," she said and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm going outside. Don't follow."

Naruto looked like he might protest. Kiba knew this side of her better than Naruto, so he simply backed down and turned his attention back onto the food on his plate.

"Sakura-"

"Don't follow, Naruto," she repeated and departed into the crowd.

She bumped into him the second that she stepped a foot outside the building.

"Sasuke," she greeted, forcing herself to keep her smile warm and genuine, while her mind was way off into different territory. Territory that involved masked faces and ambiguous gestures.

"Hello Sakura," the other man greeted her in what could be considered a pleasant fashion for him. She didn't miss how he hesitated, neither how his eyes wandered too far south than what was respectable even for childhood friends. She wasn't offended, but she wasn't flattered either. This was a fact which had kept her rightfully worried for the past months since their return to Konoha. She was indifferent to the Uchiha. She was indifferent to him as anything other than a female friend. And it was alarming, because she knew for a fact that while she had known nothing would come from it, she had always been flattered by the Uchiha's attention whenever he by accident had fixated it upon her. Until this thing with Kakashi, that is. And this was what worried her.

"That's a beautiful dress."

For a long moment, Sakura stared at Sasuke with her mouth slightly agape. It wasn't the compliment, but rather the fact that she had never heard any such word leave Sasuke's mouth.

"Are you here with…," she trailed off when she couldn't remember his girlfriend's name.

"Megumi. No. She was unavailable. That dress really suits you."

"Thank you."

"Sasuke!"

Sakura nearly breathed a hallelujah at Naruto's interruption. It didn't even matter that she had told him not to follow her. She was glad for his appearance.

"What is it, goofball?" Sasuke greeted his friend, punching him in the arm when Naruto reached up to ruffle his neatly styled hair. You would think they hadn't seen each other for days, but in reality it had probably just been a matter of minutes. The sight of them brawling was so familiar, so reassuringly old and normal, that Sakura suddenly felt at home again for the first time in a long while. Lately, the three of them hadn't been slacking off together like they used to whenever they all had a free spot in their schedule. And Sakura had admitted to herself that she missed it. She missed the two boys from her childhood who had become adults with their own lives separate from hers. She missed the days where Kiba didn't know about her infatuation with a man fourteen years her senior. She missed the old Haruno Sakura who readily took on the responsibilities handed to her, and didn't try to find ways in which she could avoid those responsibilities. Such as working late at night at the hospital and doing paperwork which wasn't truly hers to do, so that she had a reason not to stop by her mother's. Or Kakashi's place, for that matter. Her work was her refuge. It was where she didn't have to think in order to succeed. She just had to do and it was instant success.

It really was her own fault. She had grown apart from Naruto and Sasuke, but Naruto and Sasuke hadn't grown apart from each other. They were no longer a trio. They were all about duos. Naruto and Sakura. Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto was the only name mentioned twice.

Quite a few appalled faces had turned in their direction by now. Sasuke had put Naruto in a headlock and perhaps it wasn't really the right scene to be acting like this. While Sakura had no problem with the less than positive attention, she still found herself debating whether or not she should interfere. At least until another voice beat her to it and sent her heart into immediate cardiac arrest.

"If this isn't a pretty picture of the past," Kakashi said jovially, and Sakura was absolutely mortified that she hadn't felt him approach until he was standing directly beside her, radiating with warmth that never failed to pull her in like a magnet. And indeed she did find herself swaying towards the welcoming heat of his body. Then she remembered that this was not good. She was most decidedly not welcome to do any swaying of any sort. In fact, this was quite possibly the apocalypse physically manifested and she was the primary target. Back up.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto immediately perked up. "When did you get here?"

"He's not your teacher," Sasuke said with a look in Sakura's direction. Sakura cringed inwardly.

"I arrived some time ago."

Sakura dared her first look at him, and she realized with a start that he was out of his uniform. Hell, she hadn't even known that Kakashi owned civilian clothes, much less something as casual as plain dark grey slacks and a simple black shirt thrown over the thin polyester that was his mask and undershirt. She did his physicals at the hospital, so she had seen him stripped down to his underwear and at one time even less. But not even that had affected her as much as this laid-backprivate look he was currently showcasing in all its glory. She realized that she was angry. She felt betrayed by a man who wasn't hers to claim in the first place, and the thought made her sick to her stomach. She had kept her distance to him for these past two months. He had done the same. That was a pretty clear sign that they weren't exactly the best of friends at the moment.

"Sakura," Naruto's voice travelled past the blood rushing in her ears.

"What?" she snapped, not caring that her voice sounded exactly as pissed off as she felt.

"You're kinda trying to kill Kakashi-sensei with your eyes, there. It's a bit freaky."

She tore her eyes off Kakashi's figure before the man would look at her and catch her in the act. Of course, he already knew that she had been staring. As long he didn't call her out on it, however, she could delude herself into thinking that that wasn't the case.

"Did you two have a fight?" Sasuke offered his input. Sasuke's sarcasm was just evil. Vile and evil.

"Why ever would we?" she asked with a laugh that came out all wrong.

Neither Naruto, nor Sasuke looked convinced.

"Could you boys excuse us?" Kakashi asked. "I need to speak to Sakura in private."

Sasuke looked like he had been force-fed a sour grape by a bearded man in a pink dress. Naruto simply blinked.

"Very well," Kakashi replied regardless of the fact that nobody had answered. Sakura had no choice but to follow him as he took off towards the more secluded corner of the party farthest away from the main house. She didn't have to look back over her shoulder to know that she would have some explaining to do later.

"You haveno right to do that, Kakashi," she said the second that they were mostly obscured from public sight. Kakashi had placed them behind a couple of thick bushes and a tall water fountain with some sort of beautified frog that kept spraying water onto Sakura's neck and shoulders. She kept wiping it off. The Hyuuga gardens were beautiful, and it would have been a rather romantic setting if the situation hadn't been so screwed up. And she was not disappointed by this fact, she told herself.

"You have no right to embarrass me and corner me like this," she said and miraculously resisted from jabbing her finger at his chest. "This is—now they will want to know if-"

"If we're screwing around?" Kakashi suggested. "Because I would very much like to know that as well."

Months ago Sakura would have blushed at the man's crudeness. Now she sent him an unamused look.

"I swear that even Naruto is more of a gentleman than you are."

"You wouldn't have come to me if you wanted a gentleman, Sakura," Kakashi pointed out smartly.

"And you wouldn't-"

"Why did you show up in that dress?"

Her tongue curled in on itself. "I didn't even want to show-"

She didn't get to finish as Kakashi grabbed her by her shoulder and spun her around, nearly shoving her face into the bushes. A twig scratched past her collarbone and crept inside the shoulder strap of her dress, threatening to tear the fabric apart if she moved too rashly. With her trained reflexes, it took her little time to adjust to the change in position, and she immediately set out to test the strength of Kakashi's hold. She couldn't budge an inch, but she also knew that she had allowed Kakashi to manhandle her into the position in the first place. With her tight and controlled schedule at the hospital, it should come as no surprise that she was subservient in other aspects of her life. And this really was one of those aspects where it was relatively easy for a woman to be subservient, jonin or not. That ill-timed realization sent a lick of anticipation down Sakura's spine. That was just sick. She was sick. Why was she allowing this?

"What's this? An assault behind the bushes? That's a little too cliché for an intelligent man like you," she said with false confidence. She wasn't afraid. She was fighting not to fight him back. Her bones were shaking with suppressed adrenaline, and she suspected that Kakashi was well aware.

"Pleased to know you find me intelligent," Kakashi replied absently. He didn't move to close the space between them, but literally kept her fixed at an arm's length.

"You're angry."

"Yes," Kakashi said. "I'm angry."

"I've been avoiding you," Sakura admitted. She figured that since she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, she could just as well face her fears and possibly reap some sort of benefit from that courageous act.

"I don't know what I see in you. I don't know what I want. Jesus, Kakashi, I don't demand that you give me a list of every little thing you find appealing about me," she stopped when her chest felt too constricted to continue. Dimly, she realized that she was entering a state of panic, and she ought to stop herself before her mouth ran off without her brain, but she just couldn't make any sense of her thoughts unless she voiced them out loud. "Whatever it is that I see, I know that it's strong enough for me to pursue you regardless of our past official relations. And social norms in general, I think. Right? The age difference is… I think these facts speak for themselves. I do not know. I don't know. That's my answer. I don't know what I see and that's why I haven't come to you with an answer. I'm sorry. It's unfair to you."

She fell silent and awaited what she was sure would be the most painful rejection in her life. Perhaps even worse than failing her first medic exam. She had been forced to take it while she had been drugged up on pain meds. Needless to say, the result hadn't been good.

"I want you to come over to my place tonight."

Wait. That was not a rejection. That was an invite.

"I got it right? I passed?" she dared breathe and was rewarded with a quiet laugh.

"It's not an exam, Sakura."

Her entire body seemed to slump back against the man's chest as he finally closed the distance between them and stepped up behind her. He let his hands trail from her bare shoulders down to her lower arms. It hit her then that he had done it purposely. He had turned her away from him so she hadn't had to look him in the face as she answered. He had manipulated her as he usually did, but for once he had done it in her favor. It didn't matter that they shared a mutual goal. He had still done it in her favor and not his own.

"I can't tonight. I have extra hours this week."

"Tomorrow then," Kakashi concluded and stepped back. They were still in public, Sakura scolded herself when she realized why he had cut the spontaneous embrace short.

"What are we planning right now?" she asked, trying to clarify Kakashi's extremely ambiguous invitation. She felt awkward. She didn't understand the game or field that they were playing. She understood the landmines on that field and she had stepped on quite a few at this point. But she didn't understand the actual playing field. Hopefully, she would now be provided a map so she could draw a safe route.

"I know you find security in labels, Sakura, but try not to label this. You'll most likely be disappointed."

"That's a positive attitude. So, what do I tell the boys when I return? How do I explain that you dragged me off as though hell was on your heels?"

"They know?"

"Yes. Naruto is perceptive when it concerns people he cares about."

"When it concerns you," Kakashi corrected her mildly.

"I suppose. Ino knows, too. But she won't tell. Not with this. I know it's hard to believe, but she's really maternal and all that."

She had a mother in Ino and a father in Naruto. That sounded just a bit unhealthy.

Kakashi nodded. "Tell them it's official business. They won't press the matter then."

This was going to be a dirty secret in every sense of the word. She had never been good with secret relationships. Or rather, she had never approved of secret relationships. How could she now enter one despite the fact that she thought it dishonest? That was the million dollar questions and she had no answer for it.

* * *

** Edited March 10, 2013 **


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